#top

For some hippies, this vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific progress as a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast, believed that technological progress would inevitably turn their libertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by the theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications would inevitably create the electronic agora - a virtual place where everyone would be able to express their opinions without fear of censorship. Despite being a middle-aged English professor, McLuhan preached the radical message that the power of big business and big government would be imminently overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on individuals. ↗

— Richard Barbrook

#age

Undertown. You maybe don’t remember it. Your clothes don’t smell of it. Of the filth, the rot. The stinking hell of vapor and grime. The warren of hovels and the millions of us starving in them, defending whatever pathetic collection of things we call ‘ours’—sometimes to the death, yet still doing little more than waiting to die. ↗

— Julio-Alexi Genao

#death

It's a great feeling to know that 100 cops want to stop you doing something and they can't. ↗

— Alain Robert

#doing #feeling #great #great feeling #know

Now, this was a combination that she wouldn’t dare to dream of, even in her worst nightmare. ↗

— B. Barmanbek

#future #science-fiction #utopia #dreams

I understand the worries of many - not only here in this auditorium -, and some have already written to me to say that technical progress has lowered the threshold that stops people from helping themselves to protected works without the slightest embarrassment. ↗

— Johannes Rau

#auditorium #embarrassment #helping #here #i

If there were people become a real threat to my family, then I would stop them from doing so in anyway I could. ↗

— Toba Beta

#family-man #stop-the-threat #family

Nora knows better than most that nothing lasts forever. Life doesn't, love doesn't, hope doesn't, so why would death, hate, or despair? Nothing is permanent. Not even the end of the world. ↗

— Isaac Marion

#death #despair #dystopia #hope #life

All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in. [Conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth, PBS NewsHour, March 9, 1998] ↗

— Toni Morrison

#exclusion #inspiration #paradises #utopias #wishes

I made so many promises when I arrived here. Now I'm not so sure. Now I'm worried. Now my mind is a traitor because my thoughts crawl out of bed every morning with darting eyes and sweating palms and nervous giggles that sit in my chest, build in my chest, threaten to burst through my chest, and the pressure is tightening and tightening and tightening Life around here isn't what I expected it to be. ↗

— Tehereh Mafi

#books #dystopian #love #sadness #life

After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head—for creative invention is easy and sublime when air cycles quickly through the lungs and the body is busy at noble tasks. ↗

— Roman Payne

#health #jardin-du-luxembourg #nobility #noble #paris