1591) In books, television, and radio, the truth is a slave to a good story, and convincing lies are remembered, while dry factual refutations are forgotten.

Gary Wolf
"The Curse of Xanadu"
Wired (6/1995)

1592) There's a conflict between interactivity and storytelling. Most people imagine there's a spectrum between conventional written stories on one side and total interactivity ion the other. But I believe that what you really have are two safe havens separated by a put of hell that can absorb endless amounts of time, skill, and resources.

Walt Freitag
founder of Daedalus Arts
quoted by Charles Platt in
"Interactive Entertainment. Who writes it?
Who reads it? Who needs it?" in
Wired (9/1995)

1593) Life is not always interesting.

Joseph Bates
leader of the Oz project at Carnegie Mellon
quoted by Charles Platt in
"Interactive Entertainment. Who writes it?
Who reads it? Who needs it?" in
Wired (9/1995)

1594) [E]ven if I could set my PC to randomly download my favorite songs from the Net, I'd never hear new material. Radio exposes us to music that we might not think of listening to, but that we enjoy.

Robert Usdin
letter to the editor
Wired (10/1995)

1595) The utopian/dystopian technology question is a ponderously old one; proponents and opponents of trains, telegraphs, radio, and television all advances the same old game arguments, alternately triumphing new technologies as the latest step in ineluctable Western progress or decrying the loss of some organic, largely mythological past. But technology is neither good nor bad, nor even neutral.

Technology is one part of the complex of relationships that people form with each other and the world around them; it simply cannot be understood outside of that context. With this understanding, the simpleton's bipolar argument crumbles and the world is revealed - taa daa! - as a pretty complicated place.

Samuel Collins
letter to the editor
Wired (9/1995)

1596) Confusion reigns in the political arena. Old labels no longer fit, and the citizenry seems torn between competing desired for saviors and scapegoats. While society at large seems bogged down in a bewildering swamp of regulation, litigation, legislation gridlock, and intrusive social engineering, the relatively blank canvas of the Net has encouraged visionaries and gadflies to project their dreams of a new political order onto the emerging technological culture. ... Some techno-optimists, entranced with the rapid expansion of cyberspace, are convinced that the rough contours of the future can be spotted in the shadowy forms dancing across their computer screens. The pounding drums of cypherpunks, Usenet orators, civil-liberties activists, and venture capitalists, all undulating together in the flickering RGB glow, seem to whisper alluring promises of power, privacy, and pluralism in the politics to come.

Jan Kinney
"'Anarcho-Emergentist-Republicans'"
Wired (9/1995)

1597) [O]ne gets the sense that, given half a chance, the electorate would love to ditch the old left/rights horseshoe match and take on some new paradigms altogether.

Jan Kinney
"'Anarcho-Emergentist-Republicans'"
Wired (9/1995)

1598) Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform and don't kid yourselves.

Frank Zappa
remark to the audience
Royal Albert Hall, London (6/6/1969) on
"The Little House I Used To Live In"
Burnt Weenie Sandwich (lp, 1970)
by the Mothers of Invention
quoted in an ad for Rykodisc in
Wired (9/1995)