And it was not a technical innovation that set us on the present course, but an idea. That was the radically transformative idea that the universe and all that exists is no more and no less than the material effect of material causes.

He came to see life as a state of becoming, not being.

Digital memory is ubiquitous yet unimaginably fragile, limitless in scope yet inherently unstable.

The eerie certainty we have of existing as separate creatures in a world full of things that are not us, our ability to create abstract symbolic representations of our mental states and use language to communicate these interior states of mind—all

The realm of emotional intelligence, empathy, and imagination—all necessary for judgment in the context of incomplete information or conflicting aims—is beyond the reach of our machines.

This is the moral hazard Socrates warned against—that by alienating our knowledge, making it “external to us,” we have bought an immense measure of power over the world at the expense of having power over ourselves.

We hold that democracy demands equal access to goods, services, and knowledge. The culture of knowledge in America has been a servant of democratic governance. This instrumental view of knowledge meant that three principles would become fundamental to American-style democracy: The press must be free, the government must be open and accountable to

our information technologies all derive from the single insight that matter records the history of the universe because it is a slow, cold form of information. The universe writes its own autobiography in atoms.

Culture provides the large-scale framework for memory and meaning. It aids in the creation of new knowledge, but it also acts as a filter that over time determines what is of long-term value from the social perspective.