Six Memos for the Next Millennium

by Italo Calvino

We still have machines made of steel, but they now obey bits that are weightless.

If I had to choose an auspicious sign for the approach of the new millennium, I would choose this: the sudden nimble leap of the poet/philosopher who lifts himself against the weight of the world, proving that its heaviness contains the secret of lightness, while what many believe to be the life force of the times—loud and aggressive, roaring and rumbling—belongs to the realm of death, like a graveyard of rusted automobiles.

Quickness and nimbleness of thought, economy of argument, and also imaginative examples—for Galileo, these are the qualities crucial to good thinking.