Jay Matthews

"Long ago, before the Great Clock, time was measured by changes in heavenly bodies: the slow sweep of stars across the night sky, the arc of the sun and variation in light, the waxing and waning of the moon, tides, seasons. Time was measured also by heartbeats, the rhythms of drowsiness and sleep, the recurrence of hunger, the menstrual cycles of... See more

“The word “poverty” was a fine, somehow noble word. It evoked an image out of old schoolbooks: poor but clean. Cleanliness made the poor socially acceptable. Social progress meant teaching people to be clean; once the indigent had been cleaned up, “poverty” became a title of honour. Even in the eyes of the poor, the squalor of destitution applied... See more

The psychoanalysis of self psychology serves an implicit social function in seamlessly hiding the contradictions in the economic, political and cultural arrangements of our society by not analyzing them, and therefore allowing them to remain as unconscious determinants of suffering.

More than the picture itself, what counts is what it throws into the air, what it exhales. It doesn’t matter if the image is destroyed. Art can die; what matters is that it scatters seeds on the ground. An artwork must be fertile. It must give birth to a world. But we mustn’t stop there; the picture must make everything clear; it must fertilize the... See more

"One of the reasons I first started The Generalist was because I believe that the great epics of our era will occur in the tech sector . No other field asks – and tests – so many consequential philosophical, psychological, and societal questions so frequently. What is money? What makes something valuable? Will nations exist in the cloud? Can we... See more

The colonists followed the same trails to expand governance, and on the other hand, they required fine colonial engineering that eventually including land surveys, anthropological and topographic investigation, and cartography. In this land of hardship, the implementation of governance techniques needed to create a fictional collective... See more

Yes — I think you have to, at some level, in some form, have the feeling for how things might be different and better in order to make a great discovery. I think you can be lucky, but even if you’re lucky and stumble into something, you’ve got to realize that it’s something and that you should pursue it. And that is usually driven by some feeling... See more

In the future—not the distant future, but ten years, five—people will remember the internet as a brief dumb enthusiasm, like phrenology or the dirigible. They might still use computer networks to send an email or manage their bank accounts, but those networks will not be where culture or politics happens. The idea of spending _all day online_ will... See more