Frases de Neal Stephenson

página 2

“Cualquiera que crezca viendo la televisión, que nunca vea nada de religión o filosofía, se críe en una atmósfera de relativismo moral, aprenda ética viendo escándalos sexuales en el telediario, y vaya a una universidad donde los posmodernos se desviven por demoler las nociones tradicionales de verdad y cualidad, va a salir al mundo como un ser humano bastante incapaz. Y, de nuevo, tal vez el fin de todo esto es hacernos incapaces, de modo que no nos bombardeemos mutuamente con armas nuclear.”

“Quiero que sigan siendo secretos mientras los hombres sean capaces del mal.”

“Si quieres que tus secretos sigan siéndolo más allá del fin de tu vida, debes ser futurista. Debes anticipar qué velocidad alcanzarán los ordenadores durante ese periodo. También debes estudiar la política. Porque si el planeta entero se convirtiese en una estado policial obsesionado con recuperar viejo secretos, puede que se dediquen vastos recursos al problema de factorizar grandes números compuestos.”

“Cuando vives en una choza en lo alto de una montaña rodeado de un montón de nativos que no hablan ninguna de la aproximadamente media docena de lenguas que tu conoces debes aprender a discutir contigo mismo.”

“Las decisiones realmente estúpidas son siempre las más fáciles.”

“Siempre ha sentido una especie de extraña y enfermiza fascinación por las mujeres que fuman o beben mucho. (…) personas demasiado ocupadas viviendo como para preocuparse en extender la esperanza de vida.”

“Cualquier idiota puede aprender a ejecutar más o menos los pasos básicos. Eso lleva media hora. Pero cuando ha pasado la media hora, los profesores de baile siempre esperan que te eches a volar y realices una de las milagrosas transiciones temporales que solo suceden en los musicales de Broadway, y que empieces a bailar con brillantez. Randy supone que a la gente que no se le dan bien las matemáticas se siente igual: el profesor escribe algunas ecuaciones simples en la pizarra, y diez minutos después esta derivando la velocidad de la luz en el vacío.”

“Algunos se quejan de que el correo electrónico es impersonal… que tu contacto conmigo, durante la fase por correo de nuestra relación, estuvo mediatizado por cables y pantallas. Algunos dirían que no es tan buen medio como charlar cara a cara. Y sin embargo, nuestra visión de las cosas siempre esta mediatizado por las corneas, retinas, nervios ópticos y cierta maquinaria neurológica que toma la información de nuestros nervios ópticos y la propagan a nuestra mente. Por tanto, ¿es inferior mirar palabras en la pantalla? Yo creo que no; al menos en ese caso eres conciente de la distorsión. Mientras que, cuando ves a alguien con tus propios ojos, te olvidas de la distorsión y te imaginas que tienes una experiencia pura e inmediata.”

“La jungla es un bonito sitio para ir de visita, pero no querrías vivir, o dejar de moverte, allí. (…) los insectos de la jungla te ven como grandes trozos de comida animada pero no muy bien defendida.”

“No sólo no nos ofenden las imágenes manufacturadas sino que nos gustan. Prácticamente insistimos en ello. Estamos ansiosos por ser cómplices de nuestro propio engaño: por pagar dinero por el pase a un parque temático, votar a un tipo que obviamente nos está mintiendo o permanecer de pie sosteniendo la cesta que se llena de cosméticos.”

“Hay algún patrón universal de acontecimientos que cuando se filtra a través del sistema sensorial y equipamiento de gente primitiva y supersticiosa, siempre genera las representaciones internas mentales que identifican con dioses, héroes, etc.”

“A los de Disney se le dan mejor que a nadie las experiencias mediadas. Si entendieran qué son los sistemas operativos, y por qué los usa la gente, aplastarían a Microsoft en uno o dos años.”

“Izzy estaba llena de gente que se orientaba hacia el extremo Asperger del espectro social y la mejor forma de hacerla hablar era preguntarle por algún detalle técnico.”

“Tiene la misma sensación de mareo, eléctrica, nauseabunda y hiperactiva que siempre convierte el combate en una experiencia tan estimulante.”

“Angustiarse es tan fundamentalmente patético que bordea lo gracioso.”

“Sobreestimar la inteligencia del enemigo es, en cualquier caso, más peligroso que infravalorarla.”

“Uno de los aspectos útiles del servicios militar es que te acostumbras a que hombres ruidosos y ordinarios te digan groserías.”

“Si quieres vivir y respirar mañana debes sumergirte en las profundidades oscuras hoy.”

“Vivir en una comuna donde los ideales de la paz, el amor y la armonía se mantenían de boquilla les había privado de válvulas de escape normales y socialmente admitidas para su obsesión, tendía a salir de otros modos, invariablemente más siniestros.”

“La palabra, al final, es el único sistema para codificar los pensamientos - el único medio - que no es fungible, que se niega a disolverse en el torrente devorador de los medios electrónicos.”

“Creo que lo que Camila quiere decir es que ciertos tipos de personalidad, si se llevan al extremo, son tan negativos como una enfermedad mental; si no peores”

“Antes de esta reunión escribí media docena de cartas de despedida a viejos amigos y familiares —dijo—, y cuando terminemos, voy a seguir con la lista. Quizá logre escribir la mitad de las cartas antes de que los destinatarios mueran por la Lluvia Sólida. Supongo que pretendo decir que pienso como el muerto andante que soy en realidad; y eso está mal. Debería estar pensando en lo que tú estás pensando: el futuro al que vosotros y algunos pocos más podréis aspirar si todo esto sale bien. —¿Crees”

“Henry, que en aquel momento tenía once años, no había prestado atención al proceso de elevar el imponente cohete hasta su posición vertical porque se distrajo viendo un par de perros callejeros copulando a unos cien metros del punto de lanzamiento. El”

“«Pelear no es cuestión de saber hacerlo, sino de decidir hacerlo.»”

“Había que humanizar los objetos, darles un nombre mono.”

“Nacida en Nueva York de padres huidos de la represión política en Chile.”

“Algunos dicen que la bipolaridad es una adaptación útil. Cuando las cosas van mal, te deprimes, te retiras, conservas energía. Cuando las cosas van bien, te mueves con gran energía. —¿Y”

“amística, un término acuñado hacía eones por un antropólogo moirano para referirse a las elecciones que hacían las diferentes culturas en cuanto a qué tecnologías formarían parte de su vida y cuáles no.”

“Pero el mundo no lo llevan científicos e ingenieros, ¿es lo que pretendes decir?”

“El desarrollo de software comparte con el deporte profesional la característica de lograr que los treintañeros se sientan decrépitos”

“Se podían haber planteado todo tipo de argumentos filosóficos sobre si ese enfoque era mejor o peor que lo que estaban haciendo en realidad, pero, en el fondo, la filosofía no contaba demasiado.”

“They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.”

“This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.”

“Plane-change maneuvers are expensive.”

“Those who think through possible outcomes with discipline, forge connections, in so doing, to other cosmi in which those outcomes are more than mere possibilities. Such a consciousness is measurably, quantitatively different from one that has not undertaken the same work and so, yes, is able to make correct decisions in an Emergence where an untrained mind would be of little use.”

“There was a white man sitting at the kitchen table, warming his hands by wrapping them around a hot cup of tea. He had kind of an oblong face, curly red hair piled on top, a close-cropped but dense red beard, shocking blue eyes that always looked wide open. He face was ruddy with the outdoors, and the way he was sitting there with that tea, he looked so calm, so centered, almost like he was in meditation. When I came in, he looked at me and smiled just a trace, without showing his teeth…”

““Welcome to the GWOJ.”
“GWOJ?”
“Global War on Jones.””

“bulshytt … Technical and clinical term denoting speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said. …
It is inherent in the mentality of extramuros bulshytt-talkers that they are more prone than anyone else to taking offense (or pretending to) when their bulshytt is pointed out to them. … One is forced either to use this “offensive” word and be deemed a disagreeable person and as such excluded from polite discourse, or to say the same thing in a different way, which means becoming a purveyor of bulshytt oneself…. The latter quality probably explains the uncanny stability and resiliency of bulshytt.”

“For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.”

“The girl in the passenger seat said she had never before been in “a car like this,” meaning, apparently, a sedan. Richard felt far beyond merely old.”

“Talking to cancer victims never makes me feel righteous, never vindicated. It makes me slightly ill and for some reason, guilty. If people like me would just keep our mouths shut, people like him would never suspect why they got cancer. They’d chalk it up to God or probability. They wouldn't die with hearts full of venom.
It is a strange world that Industry has made. Kind of a seething toxic harbor, opening out on a blue unspoiled ocean. Most people are swimming in it, and I get to float around on the surface, on my Zodiac, announcing that they're in trouble. What I really want to do is make a difference. But I'm not sure I have, yet.”

“This was always the hard part. If you knew what was normal to the enemy, then everything became easy: you could lull them to sleep by feeding them normal, and you could scare the hell out of them by suddenly taking normal away. But normal to Afghans and Chechens was so different from normal to Russians that it took a bit of work for a man like Sokolov to establish what it was.”

“Luisa knew how to use her own ignorance as an icebreaker in conversations. Izzy was full of people who were skewed toward the Asperger’s end of the social spectrum, and there was no better way to get them to start talking than to ask them a technical question.”

“The young woman had turned toward him and thrust her pink gloves up in the air in a gesture that, from a man, meant “Touchdown!” and, from a woman, “I will hug you now!””

“What you are about to read is not an aberration: it can happen in your local university too. The Big U, simply, was a few years ahead of the rest.”

“What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded and, finally, they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it…. The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier.”

“As a fantasy writer, he was not highly regarded (“one cannot call him profoundly mediocre without venturing so far out on the critical limb as to bend it to the ground,” “so derivative that the reader loses track of who he’s ripping off,” “to say he is tin-eared would render a disservice to a blameless citizen of the periodic table of the elements”).”

“This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and to understand that objective reality, you didn’t have to waste a lot of time talking. When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows. It wasn’t necessary to have a meeting about it. The sales force didn’t need to get involved.”

“The expression can be traced to the Third Centennial Apert, when the gates of several Hundreder maths opened to reveal startling outcomes, e. g.: at Saunt Rambalf's, a mass suicide that had taken place only moments earlier. At Saunt Terramore's, nothing at all — not even human remains. At Saunt Byadin's, a previously unheard-of religious sect…. At Saunt Lesper's, no humans, but a previously undiscovered species of tree-dwelling higher primates.”

“In your high school geology class you probably were taught that all life on earth exists in a paper-thin shell called the biosphere, which is trapped between thousands of miles of dead rock underfoot, and cold dead radioactive empty space above. Companies that sell OSes exist in a sort of technosphere. Underneath is technology that has already become free. Above is technology that has yet to be developed, or that is too crazy and speculative to be productized just yet. Like the Earth's biosphere, the technosphere is very thin compared to what is above and what is below.”

“He had a sense of irony that ruled his life, made it impossible for him to use his considerable brains in any kind of serious job. Kind of like me.”

“Luisa chuckled. "I hear you, sugar. I’m not gonna say you’re wrong. But I have to warn you that this is the word—‘politics'—that nerds use whenever they feel impatient about the human realities of an organization.””

“"Describe worrying," he went on.
"What!?"
"Pretend I'm someone who has never worried. I'm mystified. It don't get it. Tell me how to worry."
"Well… I guess the first step is to envision a sequence of events as they might play out in the future."
"But I do that all the time. And yet I don't worry."
"It is a sequence of events with a bad end."
"So, you're worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?"”

“When Doob came to his senses, he was aware that a large number of telephones were singing their little electronic songs.
Including his.
The birth cry of a new age.”

“I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said. It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text.”

“In the decades before Zero, the Old Earthers had focused their intelligence on the small and the soft, not the big and the hard, and built a civilization that was puny and crumbling where physical infrastructure was concerned, but astonishingly sophisticated when it came to networked communications and software. The density with which they’d been able to pack transistors onto chips still had not been matched by any fabrication plant now in existence. Their devices could hold more data than anything you could buy today. Their ability to communicate through all sorts of wireless schemes was only now being matched.”

“Sangamon’s Principle,” I said. “The simpler the molecule, the better the drug. So the best drug is oxygen. Only two atoms. The second-best, nitrous oxide—a mere three atoms. The third-best, ethanol—nine. Past that, you’re talking lots of atoms.”
“So?”
“Atoms are like people. Get lots of them together, never know what they’ll do.”

“But he was a quick study. An autodidact. Anything that was technical, that was logical, that ran according to rules, Peter could figure out. And knew it. Didn’t bother to ask for help. So much quicker to work it out on his own than suffer through someone’s well-meaning efforts to educate him—and to forge an emotional connection with him in so doing. There was something, somewhere, that he could do better than most people.”

“Most of my colleagues go on backpacking trips when they have to do some thinking. I go to a good hardware store and head for the oiliest, dustiest corners. … If they're really good, they don't hassle me. They let me wander around and think. Young hardware clerks have a lot of hubris. They think they can help you find anything…. Old hardware clerks have learned the hard way that nothing in a hardware store ever gets bought for its nominal purpose. You buy something that was designed to do one thing, and you use it for another.”

“In four years of work, I've idled my Zodiac down every one of its thousands of inlets, looked at every inch of its fractal coastline and found every single goddamned pipe that empties into it. Some of the pipes are big enough to park a car in and some are the size of your finger, but all of them have told their story to my gas chromatograph. And often it's the littlest pipes that cause the most damage. When I see a big huge pipe coming right out of a factory, I'm betting the pumpers have at least read the EPA regs. But when I find a tiny one, hidden below the waterline, sprouting from a mile-wide industrial carnival, I put on gloves before taking my sample.
And sometimes the gloves melt.”