More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The free market quest for efficiency has made our infrastructure vulnerable.”
we might need to place a greater emphasis on resiliency.”
reality has no advertising budget.”
he found it difficult to accept that the law was an illusion. If the powers that be identified you as a threat, right or wrong, you were destroyed.
When the survival strategy of a civilization is invalidated, in all of human history none have ever turned back from the brink. When presented with disruptive change, without exception they perish.”
“Instead of adapting, their leaders clung to power and strove instead to be the last ones to starve to death.
The people behind the modern global economy will prevent any meaningful change until it’s too late.”
America is just another brand purchased for its goodwill value. For that excellent fucking logo.”
Wealth
being invested in people and projects that have begun to return value—not in dollars, but in things of intrinsic human worth. Energy, information, food, shelter.”
‘Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperators.
Repositories of human knowledge and technology are being designed and built by various curator factions around the world. The spec is simply that these repositories be durable, inspire awe, and be equipped with automated systems that can teach people useful knowledge to empower the more rational among the population so that they can achieve leadership positions. That way, should human civilization be lost in a region, this system could put locals back on a path to regain knowledge in a generation or two. It could also be useful in resisting a downward spiral to begin with.”
Scale of Themis,
Themis—the goddess of justice and order.”
“An allegorical personification of moral force—a myth powerful enough that she became enshrined in our own society as Blind Lady Justice—one of the only goddesses of our new Republic. Her symbol surrounds us to this day.”
Everyone accepted their role.
provided service,
provided ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
These rich dynasties had been using offshore photo mills for decades to enforce loyalty with one another, their business partners, and their kids.
The number of container ships being placed into warm and cold layup from lack of cargo is rising.”
When people became more reliant on multinational corporations than on their own communities, they surrendered whatever say they had in their government. Corporations are growing stronger while democratic government becomes increasingly helpless.”
seat belt pretensioners
His black riding suit resembled leather inlaid with titanium wire, but it was actually composed of flexible polymer fibers lined with sheer thickening liquid—a mixture of polyethylene glycol and particles of silica whose chemical structure stiffened instantly into a solid under rapid compression. In technical terms the gel displayed a highly nonlinear rate-dependent sheer resistance—which in layman’s terms meant it could stop a bullet or a knife while still being comfortable to wear.
pieces of ceramic composite trauma plate in critical areas, and on the backs of his gloves, as much for looks as protection.
eleven principles of the Order of Merritt
State-of-the-art, just-in-time management systems had enabled a silent revolution
ballast lane.
There were too many large financial institutions that had become insolvent, but which were so important to the centralized global economy that they couldn’t be allowed to fail. And yet, the American economy didn’t seem to have much forward momentum on anything.
Humanity already serves a system. One that doesn’t recognize the governments we create. That doesn’t respect our laws or our values.
We basically used oil and aquifer water to temporarily boost the carrying capacity of the land, all for economic growth demanded by Wall Street investors. It’s a crazy system that only makes sense when you foist all the costs onto taxpayers in the form of crop subsidies that benefit agribusiness, and defense spending to secure fossil fuels. We’re basically paying for corporations to seize control of the food supply and dictate to us the terms under which we live.”
The issue is whether citizens of a democracy claim the right to lie on matters of material significance. Individual privacy must be weighed against the corrosive effect of lies in the public discourse.
It monitors the blood activity in your brain to identify patterns of deception, recognition, and emotion
social interactions where race and gender didn’t matter. They were all members of the network here, and Sebeck had found himself increasingly looking at people’s call-outs to really know who they were. Reputation mattered more than physical appearance, and he was shocked at how quickly his brain had made that transition. Everyone had the same color call-out in the darknet.
in medieval Europe a mounted knight in armor could defeat almost any number of peasants.” He jabbed a fork in Ross’s direction. “The modern elite warrior is much the same—they can mow down mass conscripted armies with superior technology. So what happens when small elite forces can overwhelm citizen forces of almost any size? We return to feudalism—landless serfs and a permanent ruling class. Just look at the fortified upscale neighborhoods now being built with their own private security forces. It’s neofeudalism,
“Democracy requires active participation, and sooner or later someone ‘offers’ to take all the difficult decision-making away from you and your hectic life. But the darknet throws those decisions back onto you. It hard-codes democracy into the DNA of civilization. You upvote and downvote many times a day on things that directly affect your life and the lives of people around you—not just once every few years on things you haven’t got a chance in hell of affecting.”
Sobol basically used an army of teen gamers to beta test the operating system for a new civilization.
“International trade agreements are equivalent to constitutional amendments. They’re the ‘supreme law of the land’ according to article four, paragraph two. That means we must meet foreign trade obligations or face reforms—and I’ve seen firsthand what those reforms do. They create a have and have-not society. The rich are bunkering down. It’s not a conspiracy, just a reaction to a process set in motion. You don’t even have to know what the goal is. That’s why systems work—because they don’t rely on individuals.”
“Thanks for invoking this event, and remember, if you’re not playing the game, it’s playing you. Bye-bye now!”
humanity had become cogs in its own machine,
