In the 1920s, a generation before the coming of solid-state electronics, one could look at the circuits and see how the electron stream flowed. Radios had valves, as though electricity were a fluid to be diverted by plumbing. With the click of the knob came a significant hiss and hum, just at the edge of audibility.

As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldn't necessarily be good.

Particle physicists may freeze a second, open it up, and explore its dappled contents like surgeons pawing through an abdomen, but in real life, when events occur within thousandths of a second, our minds cannot distinguish past from future.

For much of the twentieth century, 1984 was a year that belonged to the future - a strange, gray future at that. Then it slid painlessly into the past, like any other year. Big Brother arrived and settled in, though not at all in the way George Orwell had imagined.

I'm not, like, always focused; I'm very unfocused. I'm reading, and then I'm looking at my phone, and then I'm on the Internet.

Growing up, I wish that I'd had the supplies and laptops and all the new technology that's out right now.

I went to college during the Kazaa/Napster era, and we had free Internet, which was a huge deal. People were just downloading all of everything.

It seems odd that at the beginning of the Internet, everyone decided everything should stick around forever.