To the Hermitage Quotes

“- we no longer live in the Age of Reason. We don’t have reason we have computation. We don’t have a tree of knowledge; we have an information superhighway. We don’t have real intelligence; we have artificial intelligence. We no longer pursue truth, we seek data and signals. We no longer have philosophers, we have thinking pragmatists. We no longer have morals, we have lifestyles. We no longer have brains which serve as the seat of our thinking minds; we have neural sites, which remember, store body signals, control genes, generate dreams, anxieties and neuroses, quite independent of whether they think rationally or not. So starting from reason, where did we get?”
― Malcolm Bradbury, To the Hermitage

“This is (I suppose) a story. It draws a great deal on history; but as history is the lies the present tells in order to make sense of the past I have improved it where necessary. I have altered the places where facts, data, info, seem dull or inaccurate. I have quietly corrected errors in the calendar, adjusted flaws in world geography, now and then budged the border of a country, or changed the constitution of a nation. A wee postmodern Haussman, I have elegantly replanned some of the world's greatest cities, moving buildings to better sites, redesigning architecture, opening fresh views and fine urban prospects, redirecting the traffic. I've put statues in more splendid locations, usefully reorganised art galleries, cleaned, transferred or rehung famous paintings, staged entire new plays and operas. I have revised or edited some of our great books, and republished them. I have altered monuments, defaced icons, changed the street signs, occupied the railway station. In all this I have behaved just as history does itself, when it plots the world's advancing story in the great Book of Destiny above.”
― Malcolm Bradbury, To The Hermitage