A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)

by Vernor Vinge

Instinct was such a fascinating thing, especially when you saw it from the inside.

Interesting problem, pain. So helpful, so obnoxious.

The worst tyrannies were the ones where a government required its own logic on every embedded node.

It was an old, old problem: to build the most advanced technological products you need an entire civilization – a civilization with all its webs of expertise and layers of capital industry. There were no shortcuts; Humankind had often imagined, but never created, a general assembler.

Hell, most governments don’t last more than a few centuries. Politics may come and go, but trade goes on forever.’

There is only one important way that computers are anything like wise. They contain thousands of years of programs, and can run most of them. In a sense, they remember every slick trick that Humankind has ever devised.’

Technology gives us wonders and terrible dangers. We can’t have one without the other. But I’m convinced we won’t survive unless we play with these things.

Funny how the least attempt at deception always seemed to make life more complicated.

advice that might be worthless but that had the stench of wisdom.

in pure Qeng Ho Nese, the term ‘black market’ existed, but only to denote ‘trade you must do in secret because it offends the local Customers.’

‘The flexibility of the governance is its life and its death.

The only trouble was, no despot had the resources to plan every detail in his society’s behavior. Not even planet-wrecker bombs had as dire a reputation for eliminating civilizations.

Even the end of the world can have short-term advantages,

the mesmerizing power of computers in the service of quackery.

They’re free to fly between the stars, and their imagination is trapped in a cage they can’t even see.’

We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.