After On Quotes

“On a scale of Burning Man to North Korea, how free are you tonight?”).”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“The passage of time makes wizards of us all.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“amazing she can keep up with everything! And it actually isn’t “speed intelligence” enabling this. Yes, she’s got that in spades—but this hyperparallel tracking is a completely different trick. And she has no idea how she does it! Which may seem to indicate lousy self-awareness. But if you know exactly how you’re able to do simple addition, perceive colors, or even remember your own name, you’re way ahead of the entire field of neuroscience, and multiple Nobel Prizes lie in your dazzling future.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“the fine-tuned universe proposition,” or “the anthropic coincidences.” It’s an awkward subject for an atheist like her. Many fundamental physical constants turn out to be immaculately tuned to permit the emergence of a life-bearing universe. While these constants could have taken any value within fairly wide ranges, they all landed at bull’s-eye settings that just happen to make the universe (and with it, us) possible. The odds of this occurring through sheer chance have been shown to be infinitesimally small by top minds”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“poster of the Yalta Conference—Yalta!—in his bedroom, the words “NEVER FORGET” emblazoned beneath Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in Polish, Latvian, Czech, Albanian, and all those other ex-commie tongues.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“his Soviet-era childhood convinced him that bad as imperfect Western democracies are when they run amok, there are greater evils out there.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“fremesis.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“Fun!!” Phluttr squeals from the WingMan screen. “I could definitely get into that! Oooh, hashtag CantWait!”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“Some punk scenes are so hostile to mainstream norms that everyone ends up dressed and coiffed identically in the name of nonconformity”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“Some campuses are so devoted to tolerance and diversity that no one dares to voice thoughts that clash with the narrow ultraorthodoxy that this devotion dictates”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“And if those parallel universes don’t exist, someone needs to explain why and how our lone universe often behaves as if they do.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“Which means humans are a lot stupider than maybe they could be. Which explains Republicans.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“I submit that an emergent AI that’s smart enough to understand its place in our world would find it terrifying. Terminator fans would want to shut it off. Governments and criminals would want to make it do odious things. Hackers would want to tinker with its mind, and telemarketers would want to sell it shit.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“An “emergent” AI is one that spontaneously arises after the local server farm plugs in one transistor too many.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“It all starts with the fact that thinking is expensive from the standpoint of natural selection,” Mitchell continues. “The brain consumes 20 percent of the calories that humans eat. And while intelligence enabled humanity’s survival, our ancestors were in a constant race against starvation, too. So their brains only got so big.” Pugwash gets it. “Being smarter gets you more to eat but only up to a point,” he says. “Then there’s diminishing returns.” Mitchell nods. “And if human brains devoured double the calories, grandma and grandpa wouldn’t have found twice the nuts and berries. So our ancestors’ brains grew until they hit a certain equilibrium.” “Which means humans are a lot stupider than maybe they could be. Which explains Republicans.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“If so, sorry if that sounded a bit mean. But we’re better off without whoever just stomped off. Those people offend easily and are always whining about how they feel “unsafe,” or undercherished if their every clumsy kick, catch, and volley isn’t commemorated with trophies.”
― Rob Reid, After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“Pluttr’s other massive draw is “pseudonymity mode.” The company maintains that people are the most authentic with their five closest friends - and with perfect strangers. The draw of strangers has forever fueled vast anonymous forums online. But anonymity also breeds awful behavior, one-off interactions rather than budding relationships, and endless lying about traits and backgrounds. So who really knows if you’re communing with a caring priest, a fellow AIDS sufferer, or a medical expert? Or an actual acquaintance of Person X? An employee of company Y? Or a fellow closeted gay person of an age, weight, and social background that attracts you? Well, Phluttr knows. And Phluttr can attest that this is a real, well-regarded person who authentically shares your affliction, secret, or curiosity without exposing actual identities (unless both sides request it). Wrap this up in NSA-grade encryption, and there’s no better place to buy sketchy substances, seek sketch advice, cheat on lovers, or cathartically confess to the above. Phluttr has now cornered the mark in id fulfillment, rumor spreading, and confidential gut spilling - and it’s just getting started.”
― Rob Reid, Forever on: A Novel of Silicon Valley

“I can’t believe Bourbon & Branch would work with them”. Them being Phluttr - makers of the sketchy app that just hijacked their conversation. Ostensibly a social network, Phluttr peppers its users with coupons, recommendations, breaking news, handy info, and jaw-dropping bits of hyperlocal gossip, all of it surgically targeted to the user’s interests, location, and/or state of mind.”
― Rob Reid, Forever on: A Novel of Silicon Valley