Jurassic Park: A Novel

“I will tell you what I am talking about,” he said. “Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the p

Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn’t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace.

Few programmers of large computer systems could resist the temptation to leave themselves a secret entrance. Partly it was common sense: if inept users locked up the system—and then called you for help—you always had a way to get in and repair the mess. And partly it was a kind of signature: Kilroy was here.

He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn’t control it. He’s at the mercy of it.

Mountains and clouds are fractal shapes. So fractals are probably related to reality. Somehow.

But I notice nobody is willing to listen to the consequences of the mathematics. Because they imply very large consequences for human life. Much larger than Heisenberg’s principle or Gödel’s theorem, which everybody rattles on about. Those are actually rather academic considerations. Philosophical considerations. But chaos theory concerns everyday

“So these velociraptors look like reptiles, with the skin and general appearance of reptiles, but they move like birds, with the speed and predatory intelligence of birds. Is that about it?” Malcolm said.

“Release version of the animals. The most recent are version 4.1 or 4.3. We’re considering going to version 4.4.” “Version numbers? You mean like software? New releases?”

It can’t be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline.

Then Godel’s theorem set similar limits to mathematics, the formal language of science. Mathematicians used to think that their language had some special inherent trueness that derived from the laws of logic. Now we know that what we call ‘reason’ is just an arbitrary game. It’s not special, in the way we thought it was.