Frases de Neal Stephenson

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“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.”

“The world has actually been wired together by digital communications systems for a century and a half. Nothing that has happened during that time compares in its impact to the first exchange of messages between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in 1858. That was so impressive that a mob of celebrants poured into the streets of New York and set fire to City Hall.”

“Hungary, severed from half of the population and most of the natural resources that it had once claimed, had now to practice a sort of economic acupuncture, striving to know the magic nodes in the global energy flow where a pinprick could alter the workings of a major organ. Mathematics was one of the few disciplines where it was possible to exert that degree of leverage, and so the Hungarians had become phenomenally good at teaching it to their children.”

“He could only conjecture what style pheromones Zula was throwing off to her peers, but to him it was a sort of hyperspace-librarian, girl-geek thing that he found clever and fetching without attracting him in a way that would have been creepy.”

“It's the ultimate Boston transportation. On land…all those slow cars get in the way. There's public transit – the T — but if you're in good shape, it's usually faster to walk. Bicycles aren't bad. But on water, nothing stops you and there isn't anything important in Boston that isn't within two blocks of being wet. The harbor and the city are interlocked like wrestling squid, tentacles of water and land snaking off everywhere, slashed with bridges or canals.”

“In the whole world, there might have been as many as ten thousand people who were better than Sokolov at falling and rolling around on hard surfaces. Circus acrobats and aikido masters, mostly. Also included in that group would have been many of the younger Spetsnaz men. The remaining six billion or so living humans did not even enter the picture.”

“She…cast an eye over the contents of his cart, wondering whether this was totally random stuff…to perfect his Walmart shopper disguise: 5.56-millimeter cartridges, a water purification device, jerky, bug repellent, a camouflage hat. Freeze-dried meals. A roll of black plastic sheeting. Parachute cord. Batteries. A folding bucksaw. Camouflage binoculars.…
It turned out that Sokolov really did want to buy all that stuff. Not because he envisioned any particular use for it. He just believed in stocking up on such things, on general principles, whenever an opportunity presented itself.
He would fit in well here.”

“One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph. D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn’t afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology.”

“That, as far as she could tell, was the purpose of the religion she had been brought up in: It made people feel better when really horrible things happened, and it offered a repertoire of ceremonies that were used to add a touch of class to such goings-on as shacking up with someone and throwing dirt on a corpse.”

“Though Richard’s Wikipedia entry had been quiet lately, in the past it had been turbulent with edit wars between mysterious people, known only by their IP addresses, who seemed to want to emphasize aspects of his life that now struck him as, while technically true, completely beside the point. Fortunately this had all happened after Dad had become too infirm to manipulate a mouse, but it didn’t stop younger Forthrasts.”

“Don Donald was clearly accustomed to addressing people whose only way of responding was to nod worshipfully and take notes. He did not, in other words, leave a lot of breaks in his testimony to allow for discussion. For the moment, that was fine, since it made it easier for Richard to drink.”

“I can hardly believe we are talking about a possibility so inconceivable as that other universes exist—and that the Geometers originate there!"
In this, Zh'vaern seemed to speak for the entire table.
Except for Jad. "The words fail. There is one universe, by the definition of universe. It is not the cosmos we see through our eyes and our telescopes—that is but a single Narrative, a thread winding through a Hemn space shared by many other Narratives besides ours. Each Narrative looks like a cosmos alone, to any consciousness that partakes of it. The Geometers came from other Narratives—until they came here, and joined ours."
Having dropped this bomb, Fraa Jad excused himself, and went to the toilet.
"What on earth is he going on about?" Fraa Lodoghir demanded. "It sounded like literary criticism!”

“Yul had simply launched himself at the guy from some distance away, and body-checked him at full speed, stopping on a dime in midair as he transferred all of his energy into the target.
"Conservation of momentum," he announced, "it's not just a good idea—it's the law!"”

“Eve Moira had been a child of London, fascinated by the natural world, but drawn to the city. So, Kath Two looked to the bright lights of the big city.
Here, that meant gazing up into the sky.”

““I have done research on it,” Aïda said. “Some say that bipolarity is a useful adaptation. When things are bad, you become depressed, retreat, conserve energy. When things are good, you spring into action with great energy.”
“And your point is …”
“Will you treat this condition in my offspring against my will?”

“It was difficult to sustain the illusion that education was of value for kids who would not live long enough to use it. They’d never take the standardized tests that they were prepping for. … Free from the constraints of racking up high test scores or getting into colleges, students could learn for learning’s sake—which was how it ought to be. The tick-tock curriculum had dissolved and been replaced by activities improvised from day to day by teachers and parents: hiking in the mountains, doing art projects about the Cloud Ark, talking with psychologists about death, reading favorite books. In one sense Amelia and her colleagues had never been more needed, never had such an opportunity to show their quality.”

“There was a common saying in the biz/tech world that “A's hire A's, and B's hire C's,” the point being that as long as you continued to recruit only the very best people, they would attract others, but as soon as you let your standards slip, the second-raters would begin to sign up third-raters to act as their minions and advance their agendas.”

“Why do they believe that?”
“Because we are hackers,” Csongor said, “and they have seen movies.”

“Both Penang and the Internet were established basically for strategic military reasons. In both cases, what was built by the military was merely a kernel for a much vaster phenomenon that came along later. This kernel was really nothing more than a protocol, a set of rules. If you wanted to follow those rules, you could participate, otherwise you were free to go elsewhere. Because the protocol laid down a standard way for people to interact, which was clearly set out and could be understood by anyone, it attracted smart, adaptable, ambitious people from all over the place, and at a certain point it flew completely out of control and turned into something that no one had ever envisioned: something thriving, colorful, wildly diverse, essentially peaceful, and plagued only by the congestion of its own success.”

“Any strategy that involves crossing a valley—accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance—will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.”

“But in that we started so many things in that moment, we brought to their ends many others that have been the subject matter of this account, and so here is where I draw a line across the leaf and call it the end.”

“Very old money was behind the Crow’s Nest. And enough of it that its Owners didn’t mind losing some every month to keep the place going. It was a kind of eleemosynary institution, created to serve not culture and not dukh, but a thing called the Purpose.”

“Men always made crude jokes about people pissing their pants with fear, but in Sokolov’s experience, shitting the pants was more common if it was a straightforward matter of extreme emotional stress. Pants pissing was completely unproductive and suggested a total breakdown of elemental control. Pants shitting, on the other hand, voided the bowels and thereby made blood available to the brain and the large muscle groups that otherwise would have gone to the lower-priority activity of digestion. Sokolov could have forgiven Peter for shitting his pants, but if he had pissed his pants, then it really would have been necessary to get rid of him.”

“Waging war on his enemies had been Sokolov’s habit and his profession for a long time, but being chivalrous to everyone else was simply a basic tenet of having your shit together as a human and as a man.”

“Gold, he learned, was considered to be a reliable store of value because extracting it from the ground required a certain amount of effort that tended to remain stable over time. When new, easy-to-mine gold deposits were found, or new mining technologies developed, the value of gold tended to fall. It didn’t take a huge amount of acumen, then, to understand that the value of virtual gold in the game world could be made stable in a directly analogous way: namely, by forcing players to expend a certain amount of time and effort to extract a certain amount of virtual gold…”

“It might interest you to know that our state is tired of being used as a chemical toilet so that people in Utah can have plastic lawn furniture.”

“Agreement got by compulsion or trickery is not agreement, but a thing akin to slavery. Free minds are the only company worth having.”

“Welcome to the GWOJ.”

“If you are going to make first contact with an intelligent alien race,” said Cantabrigia Five, “dropping huge strip-mining robots into their homeland might not be your best move.”

“If you show her too much favor she will be punished. If you touch her, we’re all dead,” Ty said.
“Why?”