"Here’s what I think: I think we would see a flourishing of innovation and the kind of excitement the book business has not seen since the paperback was invented. These companies (sellers and publishers) aren’t all going to close their doors, but a good number might."

"I suppose part of the reason why I never considered a career in academia is that I am the child of an adjunct. My father was teaching at three different institutions when I was small, and later, as he gained more seniority, he was able to teach at just one. He teaches at a community college, and he was *finally* made a full-timer this year, at the age of 63, thanks to the union. The only reason we had (barely) enough money or health insurance growing up is that my mother taught in the local public schools. And funny enough, my mother is the one who went to a state school and my dad is the one who went to the Ivy. Dad’s employer, and lots of others are making more and more use of adjuncts and driving wages down to a despicable level. I don’t know why more people aren’t outraged. "

"Maybe someday we’ll think of soap that isn’t anti-bacterial as a high-quality, artisanal product."

"IMMEDIAST projects are against all forms of coercive communication, cultural monologue and media control. We acknowledge non-violent public insurgence as a legitimate response to sustained violations by media and state. We recognize the air as public property, and the signals that travel through it to be the domain of the public."

"But enough of irony. Is this useful? I think it may be. You see, one of the great benefits of describing a problem as a Finite State Machine (FSM) is that you can complete the logic of the problem. That is, if you can enumerate the states and the events, then you know that the number of paths through the system is no larger than S * E. Or, rather, there are no more than S*E transitions from one state to another. More importantly, enumerating them is simply a matter of creating a transition for every combination of state and event.

One of the more persistent problems in BDD (and TDD for that matter) is knowing when you are done. That is, how do you know that you have written enough scenarios (tests). Perhaps there is some condition that you have forgotten to explore, some pathway through the system that you have not described."

"The biggest problem with dystopian fiction is not its pessimism. I do think there's a serious issue about who's interests are best served by making people fear the future, but I think the biggest problem with most dystopian fiction is its laziness and derivative quality. Lazy futures act like visionary static, crackling and dirtying the signal-to-noise ratio, making it harder not only for truly insightful futures to be found, but corrupting the ability of normal people to see why those visions are worth understanding."

"The result is a kind of frat house for modern-day mad scientists. Outside the collective’s home is the bustling Fulton Street Mall, where vendors hawk sneakers and bundles of incense. Inside the converted laboratory, circuit boards, gadgets and spare parts overflow from every shelf. A minifridge near the entrance is stocked with beer. Members eager to quench their thirst can also consult Bar Bot, a silvery drink-dispensing robot that resembles the Jetsons’ maid, Rosie."