🌌On Cosmology: On Planets (1975-1999)

"Apart from an understanding of the solar system as a whole, it is becoming clear that information about any planet or satellite illuminates our knowledge of the others. In particular, if we are to understand the Earth, we must have a comprehensive knowledge of the other planets."(Carl Sagan,"The Solar System", Scientific American Vol. 233 (3), 1975)

"Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied." (Stephen J Gould, "Uniformity and Catastrophe", 1977)

"It is unscientific to say that within the many billions of galactic systems, ours is the only planet that supports life in advanced form. Nature shuns one of a kind as much as it abhors a vacuum. Given infinite time and space, anything that occurs at one place or time in the universe will occur elsewhere or ‘elsewhen’." (Norman Cousins, "Rendezvous with Infinity", Cosmic Search Magazine Vol. 1 (1), 1979)

"To call a model an idealization is to suggest that the model is a simplification of what occurs in reality, usually a simplification which omits some relevant features, such as the extended mass of the planets or, in the example of the circuit model, the resistance in the bypass capacitor. Sometimes the omitted factors make only an insignificant contribution to the effect under study. But that does not seem to be essential to idealizations, especially to the idealizations that in the end are applied by engineers to study real things. In calling something an idealization it seems not so important that the contributions from omitted factors be small, but that they be ones for which we know how to correct. If the idealization is to be of use, when the time comes to apply it to a real system we had better know how to add back the contributions of the factors that have been left out. In that case the use of idealizations does not seem to counter realism: either the omitted factors do not matter much, or in principle we know how to treat them." (Nancy Cartwright, "How the Laws of Physics Lie", 1983)

"A law explains a set of observations; a theory explains a set of laws. […] a law applies to observed phenomena in one domain (e.g., planetary bodies and their movements), while a theory is intended to unify phenomena in many domains. […] Unlike laws, theories often postulate unobservable objects as part of their explanatory mechanism." (John L Casti, "Searching for Certainty: How Scientists Predict the Future", 1990)

"In practice, the intelligibility of the world amounts to the fact that we find it to be algorithmically compressible. We can replace sequences of facts and observational data by abbreviated statements which contain the same information content. These abbreviations we often call 'laws of Nature.' If the world were not algorithmically compressible, then there would exist no simple laws of nature. Instead of using the law of gravitation to compute the orbits of the planets at whatever time in history we want to know them, we would have to keep precise records of the positions of the planets at all past times; yet this would still not help us one iota in predicting where they would be at any time in the future. This world is potentially and actually intelligible because at some level it is extensively algorithmically compressible. At root, this is why mathematics can work as a description of the physical world. It is the most expedient language that we have found in which to express those algorithmic compressions." (John D Barrow, "New Theories of Everything", 1991)

"There is a multilayering of global networks in the key strategic activities that structure and destructure the planet. When these multilayered networks overlap in some node, when there is a node that belongs to different networks, two major consequences follow. First, economies of synergy between these different networks take place in that node: between financial markets and media businesses; or between academic research and technology development and innovation; between politics and media." (Manuel Castells, "The Rise of the Network Society", 1996)

🌌On Cosmology: On Planets (2000-)

"The mathematics of physics resides in physical phenomena themselves - there are ellipses in the elliptical orbits of the planets, fractals in the fractal shapes of leaves and branches, logarithms in the logarithmic spirals of snails. This means that 'the books of nature is written in mathematics', which implies that the language of mathematics is the language of nature and that only those who lznow mathematics can truly understand nature." (George Lakoff & Rafael E Nuñez, "Where Mathematics Come From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being", 2000)

"In string theory one studies strings moving in a fixed classical spacetime. […] what we call a background-dependent approach. […] One of the fundamental discoveries of Einstein is that there is no fixed background. The very geometry of space and time is a dynamical system that evolves in time. The experimental observations that energy leaks from binary pulsars in the form of gravitational waves - at the rate predicted by general relativity to the […] accuracy of eleven decimal place - tell us that there is no more a fixed background of spacetime geometry than there are fixed crystal spheres holding the planets up." (Lee Smolin, "Loop Quantum Gravity", The New Humanists: Science at the Edge, 2003)

"General relativity explains gravitation as a curvature, or bending, or warping, of the geometry of space-time, produced by the presence of matter. Free fall in a space shuttle around Earth, where space is warped, produces weightlessness, and is equivalent from the observer's point of view to freely moving in empty space where there is no large massive body producing curvature. In free fall we move along a 'geodesic' in the curved space-time, which is essentially a straight-line motion over small distances. But it becomes a curved trajectory when viewed at large distances. This is what produces the closed elliptical orbits of planets, with tiny corrections that have been correctly predicted and measured. Planets in orbits are actually in free fall in a curved space-time!" (Leon M Lederman & Christopher T Hill, "Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe", 2004)

"The calculus is a theory of continuous change - processes that move smoothly and that do not stop, jerk, interrupt themselves, or hurtle over gaps in space and time. The supreme example of a continuous process in nature is represented by the motion of the planets in the night sky as without pause they sweep around the sun in elliptical orbits; but human consciousness is also continuous, the division of experience into separate aspects always coordinated by some underlying form of unity, one that we can barely identify and that we can describe only by calling it continuous." (David Berlinski, "Infinite Ascent: A short history of mathematics", 2005)

"At all events, our world pictures may have components of all three kinds: perceptual, conceptual, and praxiological (action-theoretical).  This is because there are three gates to the outer world: perception, conception, and action. However, ordinarily only one or two of them need be opened: combinations of all three, as in building a house according to a blueprint, are the exception.  We may contemplate a landscape without forming either a conceptual model of it or a plan to act upon it.  And we may build a theoretical model of an imperceptible thing, such as an invisible extrasolar planet, on which we cannot act." (Mario Bunge, "Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism", 2006)

"Physicists use mathematics to study what they amusingly call the real world. It is real, in a sense, but much of physics addresses rather artificial aspects of reality, such as a lone electron or a solar system with only one planet. Physicists are often scathing about proofs, partly out of fear, but also because experiment gives them a very effective way to check their assumptions and calculations." (Ian Stewart, "Letters to a Young Mathematician", 2006)

"Differential equations have found their way into all areas of physics from the motion of planets around the Sun to standing waves on a rope or a drum, to electrical properties of conductors, and the behavior of electromagnetic fields and beyond. As is always the case, no mathematics can draw more attention than that which deals directly with Nature. The urgency of finding solutions to these differential equations prompted many mathematicians of the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries to concentrate heavily on certain specific differential equations. It appeared that every differential equation dictated by Nature gave rise to a new function. The most common scheme for solving these differential equations was to assume a power series solution, substitute the assumed solution in the differential equation, and determine the (unknown) coefficients from the resulting equality of power series." (Sadri Hassani, "Mathematical Methods: For Students of Physics and Related Fields", 2009)

"One of the great advantages of vectors is their ability to express results independent of any specific coordinate systems. Physical laws are always coordinate-independent. For example, when we write F = ma both F and a could be expressed in terms of Cartesian, spherical, cylindrical, or any other convenient coordinate system. This independence allows us the freedom to choose the coordinate systems most convenient for the problem at hand. For example, it is extremely difficult to solve the planetary motions in Cartesian coordinates, while the use of spherical coordinates facilitates the solution of the problem tremendously." (Sadri Hassani, "Mathematical Methods: For Students of Physics and Related Fields", 2009)

"Standard economists don't seem to understand exponential growth. Ecological economics recognizes that the economy, like any other subsystem on the planet, cannot grow forever. And if you think of an organism as an analogy, organisms grow for a period and then they stop growing. They can still continue to improve and develop, but without physically growing, because if organisms did that you’d end up with nine-billion-ton hamsters." (Robert Costanza, "What is Ecological economics", 2010)

"Probability is often expressed using large but finite numbers: ‘one in a thousand’, ‘one in a million’. But perhaps the probability of life, intelligent life, appearing somewhere in our universe is infinitesimal. If so, a universe would need infinitely many planets to produce even a finite number of civilisations (i.e., one)." (Daniel Tammet, "Thinking in Numbers" , 2012)

"The goal of physics is to explain the workings of the nonliving world. At first, philosophers described the properties of real objects: the wandering of planets across the night sky, the formation of ice, or the sound of a lyre. When attention turned to things that couldn’t be seen or measured so easily, physicists invented mechanical models to take the place of real things." (Hans C von Baeyer, "QBism: The future of quantum physics", 2016)

📓On Literature: On Satellites

"They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty one and a half." (Jonathan Swift, "Gulliver's Travels", 1726)

"Thanks to the courage and devotion of three men, this project of sending a bullet to the moon, once seen as a futile enterprise, had already produced concrete results, with incalculable consequences. The voyagers, imprisoned in their new satellite, had not reached their destination, but at least they had become part of the lunar world; they were in orbit around the celebrity of the night, and, for the first time, the human eye could penetrate all her mysteries." (Jules Verne, "From the Earth to the Moon", 1865)

"Nothing can be prettier than to see the movement, in perfectly harmonic relations, of planets round their centres, of satellites around planets, of suns, with their planets and satellites, around their centres, and of these in turn around theirs. And to persons who have loved earth as much as I do, and who, while at school there, have studied other worlds and stars, then distant, as carefully as I have, nothing, as I say, can be more charming than to see at once all this play and interplay; to see comets passing from system to system, warming themselves now at one white sun, and then at a party-colored double; to see the people on them changing customs and costumes as they change their light, and to hear their quaint discussions as they justify the new and ridicule the old." (Edward E Hale, "Hands Off", 1881)

"On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment." (W Somerset Maugham, "Of Human Bondage", 1915)

"I get so scared sometimes. The suddenness of our age! Electronics, rockets, earth satellites, supersonic flight, and now this. It's not so much who invents them. It's the fact they exist. […] Everything's going so fast, I'm just not ready to take it all in. It's, it's all so quick." (James Clavel, "The Fly", [adapted from a 1957 short story by George Langelaan] 1958)

"The Solar System, comprising the nine known worlds of our Sun and their numerous satellites, is a relatively compact structure, a snug little celestial oasis in an endless desert." (Arthur C Clarke, "The Challenge of the Spaceship", 1959) 

"[...] we know now that comet and asteroid impacts have changed history, and soon we will have the technology to avert that disaster. [...] the dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program." (Arthur C Clarke, Discover Magazine, [Interview] 1999)

🌌On Cosmology: On Satellites

"The smallest planets are situated nearest the sun and each other; whereas Jupiter and Saturn, that are vastly greater than the rest, and have many satellites about them, are wisely removed to the extreme regions of the system, and placed at an immense distance one from the other." (Richard Bentley, “A Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World",  "Boyle Lecture sermon", 1692)

"Astronomy has already made an important step, in making us acquainted with the motion of the Earth, and the epicycles which the Moon and the satellites describe on the orbits of their respective planets. But if ages were necessary in order to know the motions of the planetary system, what a great length of time must be required for the determination of the motions of the Sun and the stars; notwithstanding this, such motions appear to be already indicated by observations." (Pierre-Simon Laplace, "Exposition du système du monde" ["Exposition of the System of the World"], 1796) 

"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act […] Our faculties are more fitted to recognize the wonderful structure of a beetle than a Universe." (Charles Darwin, "Notebook N", 1838)

"If proof were wanted of the inexhaustible fertility of astronomical science in points of novelty and interest, it would suffice to adduce the addition to the list of members of our system of no less than eight new planets and satellites during the preparation of these sheets for the press." (John F W Herschel,"Outlines of Astronomy", 1849)

"Like a shower of stars the worlds whirl, borne along by the winds of heaven, and are carried down through immensity, suns, earths, satellites, comets, shooting stars, humanities, cradles, graves, atoms of the infi nite, seconds of eternity, perpetually transform beings and things." (Camille Flammarion, "Popular Astronomy: A General Description of the Heavens", 1899)

"To place one’s feet on the soil of asteroids, to lift a stone from the moon with your hand, to construct moving stations in ether space, to organize inhabited rings around Earth, moon and sun, to observe Mars at the distance of several tens of miles, to descend to its satellites or even to its own surface - what could be more insane! However, only at such a time when reactive devices are applied, will a great new era begin in astronomy: the era of more intensive study of the heavens." (Konstantin E Tsiolkovsky,"The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices", 1903

"From the smallest satellite slave of the smallest star to the largest super-galaxy of worlds in space, everything bows to the first law of nature. Chaos and caprice do not exist." (John H Bradley Jr, "Parade of the Living", 1930)

"The satellite is a natural extension of rockets, which are natural extensions of planes and balloons, which are natural extensions of man's climbing trees and mountains in order to get up higher and thus have a better view." (James Van Allen, "Science: Reach Into Space", Time, 1959) 

"The Solar System, comprising the nine known worlds of our Sun and their numerous satellites, is a relatively compact structure, a snug little celestial oasis in an endless desert." (Arthur C Clarke, "The Challenge of the Spaceship", 1959)

"Apart from an understanding of the solar system as a whole, it is becoming clear that information about any planet or satellite illuminates our knowledge of the others. In particular, if we are to understand the Earth, we must have a comprehensive knowledge of the other planets."(Carl Sagan,"The Solar System", Scientific American Vol. 233 (3), 1975)

"New computer calculations, based on observations from the Voyager satellites and ground-based telescopes, show that just about every moon except the earth's-has experienced millions of years [sic] chaotic tumbling. A tumbling moon falls end over end, twists sideways, speeds up, slowsdown, all the time obeying Newton's completely deterministic laws of motion, yet defy [sic] prediction in a way that scientists used to consider impossible." (James Gleick, 1987)

"A law explains a set of observations; a theory explains a set of laws. […] a law applies to observed phenomena in one domain (e.g., planetary bodies and their movements), while a theory is intended to unify phenomena in many domains. […] Unlike laws, theories often postulate unobservable objects as part of their explanatory mechanism." (John L Casti, "Searching for Certainty: How Scientists Predict the Future", 1990)

"[...] we know now that comet and asteroid impacts have changed history, and soon we will have the technology to avert that disaster. [...] the dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program." (Arthur C Clarke, Discover Magazine, [Interview] 1999) 

"In every language, from Arabic to Zulu to calligraphy to shorthand to math to music to art to wrought stone, everything from the Unified Field Theory to a curse to a sixpenny nail to an orbiting satellite, anything expressed is a net around some idea." (Richard Bach, "One", 1988)

📡On Technology: On Radio-Television

"One ought to be ashamed to make use of the wonders of science embodied in a radio set, the while appreciating them as little as a cow appreciates the botanic marvels in the plants she munches." (Albert Einstein, [remarks opening the Seventh German Radio Exhibition at Berlin] 1930)

"Typography is not only a technology but is in itself a natural resource or staple, like cotton or timber or radio; and, like any staple, it shapes not only private sense ratios but also patterns of communal interdependence." (Marshall McLuhan, "The Gutenberg Galaxy", 1962)

"Although the medium is the message, the controls go beyond programming. The restraints are always directed to the content, which is always another medium. The content of the press is literary statement, as the content of the book is speech, and the content of the movie is the novel. So the effects of radio are quite independent of its programming."  (Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media", 1964)

"If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly aquire new meanings and different textures... and on the radio. Given only the sound of a play, we have to fill in all of the senses, not just the sight of the action. So much do-it-yourself, or completion and closure of action, develops a kind of independent isolation in the young that makes them remote and inaccessible." (Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media", 1964)

"Radio comes to us ostensibly with person to person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magic power to touch remote and forgotten chords." (Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media", 1964)

"The message of radio is one of violent, unified implosion and resonance." (Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media", 1964) 

"To the optical astronomer, radio data serves like a good dog on a hunt." (Fred Hoyle, "Galaxies, Nuclei and Quasars". 1965) 

"The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem; not radio, but the soap opera; not the income tax, but the expense account; not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate." (Isaac Asimov, "From earth to heaven", 1972)

"It is a striking thought that ten years of radio astronomy have taught humanity more about the creation and organization of the universe than thousands of years of religion and philosophy." (Paul Davies, "Space and Time in the Modern Universe", 1977) 

"The total amount of energy from outside the solar system ever received by all the radio telescopes on the planet Earth is less than the energy of a single snowflake striking the ground." (Carl Sagan, "Cosmos" 1980)

"Television contracts the imagination and radio expands it." (Terry Wogan, Observer, 1984) 

"While amplitude damped spark gap radio waves are suitable for transmitting keyed on-off coded signals, such waves are not suitable for voice (or music) transmission. The reason for this can be understood once it is realized that for information to be transmitted it is necessary for something to change. If nothing changes, then the receiver of the signals can predict with perfect accuracy what the future nature of the signals will be - exactly what they werel It is unnecessary, actually, to transmit anything if nothing changes." (Paul J Nahin, "The Science of Radio", 1995)

"The mind is more powerful than any imaginable particle accelerator, more sensitive than any radio receiver or the largest optical telescope, more complete in its grasp of information than any computer: the human body- its organs, its voice, its powers of locomotion, and its imagination- is a more-than-sufficient means for the exploration of any place, time or energy level in the universe." (Terence McKenna,"True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival", 1998)

"New ways of seeing can disclose new things: the radio telescope revealed quasars and pulsars, and the scanning electron microscope showed the whiskers of the dust mite. But turn the question around: Do new things make for new ways of seeing?" (William L Heat-Moon,"Blue Highways: A Journey into America", 2012) 

📡On Technology: On Internet (2000-2009)

"To get a big company moving fast, especially on a many-headed opportunity like the Internet, you have to have hundreds of people participating and coming up with ideas." (Bill Gates, "Business at the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy", 2000)

"We must also promote global access to the Internet. We need to bridge the digital divide not just within our country, but among countries. Only by giving people around the world access to this technology can they tap into the potential of the Information Age." (Al Gore, [IPI speech] 2000)

"The fundamental digital divide is no measured by the number of connections to the Internet, but by the consequences of both connection and lack of connection." (Manuel Castells, "The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society" 2001) 

"The Internet Culture is the culture of the creators of the Internet." (Manuel Castells, "The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society" 2001)

"The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever." (Umberto Eco, "This is Not the End of the Book: A conversation curated by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac", 2001)

"The problems with software are just examples of the problems found generally with creativity. Our trend in copyright law has been to enclose as much as we can; the consequence of this enclosure is a stifling of creativity and innovation. If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit." (Lawrence Lessig, "May the Source Be With You" 2001)

"The new information technology [...] Internet and e-mail [...] have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications." (Peter Drucker, "Managing in the Next Society" 2002)

"In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better." (Michael Crichton, "Environmentalism as a Religion", [speech] 2003)

"One of the powerful things about networking technology like the Internet or the Web or the Semantic Web [...] is that the things we've just done with them far surpass the imagination of the people who invented them." (Tim Berners-Lee, "The Semantic Web: An Introduction", 2003)

"The Internet is a medium only at the bit level. At the human level, it is a conversation that, because of the persistence and linkedness of pages, has elements of a world. It could only be a medium if we absolutely didn't care about it." (David Weinberger, "The Internet is not a medium", [article] 2004) 

"It is not only a metaphor to transform the Internet to a superbrain with self-organizing features of learning and adapting. Information retrieval is already realized by neural networks adapting to the information preferences of a human user with synaptic plasticity. In sociobiology, we can 1 earn from populations of ants and termites how to organize traffic and information processing by swarm intelligence. From a technical point of view, we need intelligent programs distributed in the nets. There are already more or less intelligent virtual organisms {'agents'), learning, self-organizing and adapting to our individual preferences of information, to select our e-mails, to prepare economic transactions or to defend the attacks of hostile computer viruses, like the immune system of our body." (Klaus Mainzer, "Complexity Management in the Age of Globalization", 2006)

"Scale-free networks are particularly vulnerable to intentional attack: if someone wants to wreck the whole network, he simply needs to identify and destroy some of its hubs. And here we see how our world’s increasing connectivity really matters. Scientists have found that as a scale-free network like the Internet or our food-distribution system grows- as it adds more nodes - the new nodes tend to hook up with already highly connected hubs." (Thomas Homer-Dixon, "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization", 2006)

"The internet's perfect for all manner of things, but productive discussion ain't one of them. It provides scant room for debate and infinite opportunities for fruitless point-scoring: the heady combination of perceived anonymity, gestated responses, random heckling and a notional live audience quickly conspire to create a perfect storm of perpetual bickering." (Charlie Brooker, "Dawn of the Dumb" 2007)

"The real power of tribes has nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with people." (Seth Godin, "Tribes: We need you to lead us", 2008)

📡On Technology: On Internet (2010-)

"As it turns out, complex networks are everywhere. Or, to be more precise, it turns out that if we model real-world situations in terms of networks, we often discover new things. What is striking, is that many real-world net- works look alike: the structure of the Internet resembles the organization of our brain, but also the organization of online social communities. Where these similarities come from is still a mystery, just as it is often very difficult to understand how certain networks were actually structured." (Maarten van Steen, "Graph Theory and Complex Networks: An Introduction", 2010)

"Net neutrality would require that every search engine produce an equal number of results that satisfy every disagreement about [every] issue... Just think of it as Fairness Doctrine for the Internet." (Rush Limbaugh, "On net neutrality", The Rush Limbaugh Show, 2010)

"Possibly worst of all, from the standpoint of the dedicated enemies of freedom, the Internet is a world that libertarians - having been marginalized for three decades by the establishment media - have made their own, almost without effort. It's an alternative reality (unlike 'meat-space' we live in) in which - exactly like intelligence, bravery, or virtue - the human capacity for violence is not additive, and in which it's impossible to initiate force against anybody." (L Neil Smith," Keep Your Filthy Hands Off The Internet", 2010)

"The quintessential exercise of free speech in a culture supposedly built on that concept and dedicated to it, the Internet's development is as historically important to humanity - perhaps even more so - as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press." (L Neil Smith," Keep Your Filthy Hands Off The Internet", 2010) 

"Internet use is diffusing fast, but this diffusion follows a spatial pattern that fragments its geography according to wealth, technology, and power: it is the new geography of development." (Manuel Castells, "The Internet Galaxy:Reflections on the Internet", 2001)

"An Internet search engine is a finite-state, deterministic machine, except at those junctures where people, individually and collectively, make a nondeterministic choice as to which results are selected as meaningful and given a click. These clicks are then immediately incorporated into the state of the deterministic machine, which grows ever so incrementally more knowledgeable with every click. This is what Turing defined as an oracle machine."  (George B Dyson, "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe", 2012)

"As wearable devices, health tracking, and quantified self are gaining popularity, human beings are also becoming part of the Internet of things." (Newton Lee, "Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness" 2012)

"International trade in goods and services has expanded steadily over the past six decades thanks to declines in shipping and communication costs, globally negotiated reductions in government trade barriers, the widespread outsourcing of production activities, and a greater awareness of foreign cultures and products. New and better communications technologies, notably the Internet, have revolutionized the way people in all countries obtain and exchange information." (Paul Krugman, "Paul R. Krugman et al," International Economics: Theory & Policy" 9th ed., 2012)

"The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible." (Ben Horowitz, 2012)

"An open internet is an open platform for debating opposing views. It allows both popular and unpopular voices to be heard. It is a civilized outlet for frustrated individuals to express themselves without resorting to violence or terrorism." (Newton Lee, "Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness" 2013)

"The internet is not necessarily a golden goose yet, but we must fight to keep it safe, keep it level, keep it democratic, keep it open, keep it diverse so that when it becomes the golden goose, we independent artists can share and maybe at least get a wing or a thigh, even if we don't get the breast meat." (Lloyd Kaufman, 2013)

"A system might thus greatly boost its effective intellectual capability by absorbing pre-produced content accumulated through centuries of human science and civilization: for instance, by reading through the internet. If an AI reaches human level without previously having had access to this material or without having been able to digest it, then the AI’s overall recalcitrance will be low even if it is hard to improve its algorithmic architecture." (Nick Bostrom, "Superintelligence", 2014)

"Converting the Internet into a system of surveillance thus guts it of its core potential. Worse, it turns the Internet into a tool of repression, threatening to produce the most extreme and oppressive weapon of state intrusion human history has ever seen."  (Glenn Greenwald, "No Place to Hide", 2014)

"For many kids, the Internet is a means of self-actualization. It allows them to explore who they are and who they want to be, but that works only if we’re able to be private and anonymous, to make mistakes without them following us." (Glenn Greenwald, "No Place to Hide", 2014)

"To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination." (Glenn Greenwald, "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State", 2014)

"What made the Internet so appealing was precisely that it afforded the ability to speak and act anonymously, which is so vital to individual exploration."  (Glenn Greenwald, "No Place to Hide", 2014)

"A system which is usually composed of large number of possibly heterogeneous interacting agents, which are seen to exhibit emergent behavior. Emergence implies that system level behavior (macro level) cannot be inferred from observation of individual level behavior of its constituents (micro level). This absence of explicit links between the micro and macro levels makes complex systems especially difficult to analyze using traditional statistical and analytical techniques to study the dynamics of behavior. One typically requires the use of bottom up simulation based methods to study such systems. Complex systems are ubiquitous - markets, societies, social networks, the Internet, weather, ecosystems, are just a few examples." (Stephen E Glavin & Abhijit Sengupta, "Modelling of Consumer Goods Markets: An Agent-Based Computational Approach", Handbook of Research on Managing and Influencing Consumer Behavior, 2015)

"This common view of statistics as a basic ‘bag of tools’ is now facing major challenges. First, we are in an age of data science, in which large and complex data sets are collected from routine sources such as traffic monitors, social media posts and internet purchases, and used as a basis for technological innovations such as optimizing travel routes, targeted advertising or purchase recommendation systems [...]. Statistical training is increasingly seen as just one necessary component of being a data scientist, together with skills in data management, programming and algorithm development, as well as proper knowledge of the subject matter." (David Spiegelhalter, "The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data", 2019)

📡On Technology: On Internet (-2009)

"The Internet has come to resemble an enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor, and a continuous stream of new books being added helter-skelter to the piles." (Robert R Pool, Science, 1994) 

"Developments on the Internet over the next several years will set the course of our industry for a long time to come." (Bill Gates, "Internet Tidal Wave", [Microsoft internal memo], 1995)

"It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an information highway, but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies." (Mike Royko, Chicago Tribune, 1996)

"The Internet is an elite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call." (Noam Chomsky, The Observer, 1996) 

"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had." (Eric Schmidt, [Speech at Netscape Communications Developers' conference], 1996)

"Information on the Internet is subject to the same rules and regulations as conversation at a bar." (George D Lundberg, "Alternative Medicine Online", 1997)

"The internet model has many lessons for the new economy but perhaps the most important is its embrace of dumb swarm power. The aim of swarm power is superior performance in a turbulent environment. When things happen fast and furious, they tend to route around central control. By interlinking many simple parts into a loose confederation, control devolves from the center to the lowest or outermost points, which collectively keep things on course. A successful system, though, requires more than simply relinquishing control completely to the networked mob." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"The Internet is going to change marketing before it changes almost anything else, and old marketing will die in its path." (Seth Godin, "Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers", 1999)

🌌On Cosmology: On Singularity (2000-)

"Mathematicians call the infinite curvature limit of spacetime a singularity. In this picture, then, the big bang emerges from a singularity. The best way to think about singularities is as boundaries or edges of spacetime. In this respect they are not, technically, part of spacetime itself." (Paul Davies," Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life", 2007)

"The best way to think about singularities is as boundaries or edges of spacetime. In this respect they are not, technically, part of spacetime itself." (Paul Davies," Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life", 2007)

"Catastrophe theory can be thought of as a link between classical analysis, dynamical systems, differential topology (including singularity theory), modern bifurcation theory and the theory of complex systems. [...] The name ‘catastrophe theory’ is used for a combination of singularity theory and its applications. [...] From the didactical point of view, there are two main positions for courses in catastrophe theory at university level: Trying to teach the theory as a perfect axiomatic system consisting of exact definitions, theorems and proofs or trying to teach mathematics as it can be developed from historical or from natural problems. (Werner Sanns, "Catastrophe Theory" [Mathematics of Complexity and Dynamical Systems, 2012])

"Classification is only one of the mathematical aspects of catastrophe theory. Another is stability. The stable states of natural systems are the ones that we can observe over a longer period of time. But the stable states of a system, which can be described by potential functions and their singularities, can become unstable if the potentials are changed by perturbations. So stability problems in nature lead to mathematical questions concerning the stability of the potential functions." (Werner Sanns, "Catastrophe Theory" [Mathematics of Complexity and Dynamical Systems, 2012])

"The Singularity is a hypothetical super-jump in the field of artificial intelligence, rendering our reliance on 'biological intelligence' obsolete, pushing us into a shared technological realm so advanced that it will be unrecognizable from the world of today."(Chuck Klosterman, "But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past", 2016)

"The primary aspects of the theory of complex manifolds are the geometric structure itself, its topological structure, coordinate systems, etc., and holomorphic functions and mappings and their properties. Algebraic geometry over the complex number field uses polynomial and rational functions of complex variables as the primary tools, but the underlying topological structures are similar to those that appear in complex manifold theory, and the nature of singularities in both the analytic and algebraic settings is also structurally very similar." (Raymond O Wells Jr, "Differential and Complex Geometry: Origins, Abstractions and Embeddings", 2017)

"Even strong proponents of a utopian future based on advance‐ments in AI must agree that a dystopian future after a technological singularity cannot be fully excluded. Since the consequences might be catastrophic, dystopian outcomes must play a role in broader discussions about AI and superintelligence." (Yves Hilpisch, "Artificial Intelligence in Finance A Python-Based Guide", 2021)

🌌On Cosmology: On Big Bang (2000-)

"A more extreme form of exponential growth was probably responsible for the start of the universe. Astronomer and physicists now generally accept the Big Bang theory, according to which the universe started at an unimaginably small size and then doubled in a split second 100 times, enough to make it the size of a small grapefruit. This period of 'inflation' or exponential growth then ended, and linear growth took over, with an expanding fireball creating the universe that we know today." (Richar Koch, "The Power Laws", 2000)

"String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation." (Brian Greene, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory", 2000)

"Zero is behind all of the big puzzles in physics. The infinite density of the black hole is a division by zero. The big bang creation from the void is a division by zero. The infinite energy of the vacuum is a division by zero. Yet dividing by zero destroys the fabric of mathematics and the framework of logic - and threatens to undermine the very basis of science. […] The universe begins and ends with zero." (Charles Seife ."Zero, the Biography of a Dangerous Idea", 2000)

"Zero was at the heart of the battle between East and West. Zero was at the center of the struggle between religion and science. Zero became the language of nature and the most important tool in mathematics. And the most profound problems in physics - the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the big bang - are struggles to defeat zero." (Charles Seife ."Zero, the Biography of a Dangerous Idea", 2000)

"In string theory, to understand the nature of the Big Bang, or the quantum fate of a black hole, or the nature of the vacuum state that determines the properties of the elementary particles, requires information beyond perturbation theory [...] Perturbation theory is not everything. It is just the way the [string] theory was discovered." (Edward Witten, "The Past and Future of String Theory", 2003)

"The universe is noisy on all scales even if the universe itself is not noise. The fading noise of the ancient big bang explosion fills the cosmos. It still gently hisses and crackles all around us in the form of junk microwave radiation." (Bart Kosko, "Noise", 2006)

"Mathematicians call the infinite curvature limit of spacetime a singularity. In this picture, then, the big bang emerges from a singularity. The best way to think about singularities is as boundaries or edges of spacetime. In this respect they are not, technically, part of spacetime itself." (Paul Davies," Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life", 2007)

"The standard big bang model doesn’t explain the smoothness and flatness of the universe, so it’s been embellished by an additional component: inflation. A minuscule fraction of a second after the big bang, the universe was propelled into an exponential expansion that increased its size from a proton to a grapefruit. […] Moreover, if we accept the theory that the universe emerged from a quantum seed and exponentially expanded in the big bang, there is the possibility that other regions of space-time exist, remote in time or space from our universe. Due to the random nature of quantum processes, these parallel universes could have wildly different properties. This extravagant concept is called the multiverse." (Chris Impey, "The Living Cosmos: Our search for life in the universe", 2007)

"Basis real and imaginary numbers have eternal and necessary reality. Complex numbers do not. They are temporal and contingent in the sense that for complex numbers to exist, we first have to carry out an operation: adding basis real and imaginary numbers together. Complex numbers therefore do not exist in their own right. They are constructed. They are derived. Symmetry breaking is exactly where constructed numbers come into existence. The very act of adding a sine wave to a cosine wave is the sufficient condition to create a broken symmetry: a complex number. The 'Big Bang', mathematically, is simply where a perfect array of basis sine and cosine waves start entering into linear combinations, creating a chain reaction, an 'explosion', of complex numbers - which corresponds to the “physical” universe." (Thomas Stark, "God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics", 2018)

"Ontological mathematics is operating in such a way as to organize itself into a zero-entropy structure – mathematical perfection. The 'Big Bang' is equivalent to the total scrambling of a cosmic Rubik’s Cube. The task of ontological mathematics is then to unscramble the Cube and return it to its original, pristine configuration. Emotionally, this amounts to returning to perfect Love and Bliss. Intellectually, it means reaching a state of perfect logic and reason [...] thinking perfectly." (Thomas Stark, "God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics", 2018)

"[...] imagine that at some point, this flickering chaos was suddenly influenced by a shift in the rules – perhaps the laws of physics as we know them didn't always apply. If these laws changed, they could have triggered a colossal release of energy, forcing spacetime to stabilize and expand – creating the Big Bang. In this view, the Big Bang wasn’t the true beginning but more like a dramatic phase transition, similar to water turning into steam when heated." (Lars Tvede et al, "Hyperintelligence How the Universe Engineers Its Own Mind", 2025)