Technologies are not neutral: they come with attached agendas, with associated ways of thinking. Industrial revolutions are inherently political revolutions.
Sociopath was one of the most useful concepts that Miriam's Memetic Engineering Task Force had imported from the United States: Erasmus's Propaganda Ministry had been working overtime to raise awarene...
See, it’s the sudden cognitive whiplash that does it. One moment you’re cruising along effortlessly at thirty thousand feet while the cabin crew slosh the whisky around in business class, the next you...
Russian espionage directed against the West has been rising since 2001. We kind of forgot that you don’t need communism to set up an east/west squabble between the Russian Empire and Western Europe—in...
Organizations are not human beings and they don’t obey the same priorities. They’re hives. Like the bank you worked for, I suppose, but you were too specialized, working at too low a level to see the...
Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint.
Never bring a knife to a gun fight, I tell Mr. Crispy as I turn away from him. His right arm thinks about it for a moment, then falls off.
Maybe solitude is the key to it all. A galactic isolation imposed by the vast gulfs between the stars, the lightspeed limit. As a species develops you might have a brief phase of individuality, of inn...
Los idiotas emiten bogones que hacen que las máquinas se estropeen en su presencia. Los administradores de sistema absorben los bogones, lo que permite que las máquinas vuelvan a funcionar.
I passed through this stage years ago on Venus, where I was so unfashionable that eventually I almost convinced myself I no longer cared that nobody wanted me; but recent events have reawakened my nee...
I argued for a Kindle but they pointed out that if it could be associated with me, then the information bleed—Amazon logging every page turn and annotation—was a potential security hazard. Not to ment...
He shakes his head. I’m sorry, but the official Home Office superhero team is going to have to conform to public expectations of what a superhero team should look like, or it’s not really going to wor...
He looks like the bastard offspring of a multitool and a mangabot.
Growing old is natural, growls the old woman. When you’ve lived long enough for all your ambitions to be in ruins, friendships broken, lovers forgotten or divorced acrimoniously, what’s left to go on...
Desks are to executives what souped-up Mitsubishi Colts with low-profile alloys, metal-flake paint jobs, and extra-loud, chrome-plated exhaust pipes are to chavs; they’re a big swinging dick, the prox...
Cassie believes that she is Agent First of Spies and Liars, daughter of the former General-Overseer of the 14th Western Host of Air and Darkness, who is now the All-Highest of the Morningstar Empire (...
Back to my question: is it better to reign in Hell—or should I aspire to be a citizen in the early years of a better nation?
Autarchies had been shattered, hermit kingdoms destroyed. Almost a billion had died in war, plague, starvation, and madness. But worse was yet to come, as what passed for civilization on this world gu...
As long as you expect someone or something else to take responsibility for you, you’re a child.
As Terry Pratchett observed, inside every eighty-year-old man is an eight-year-old wondering what the hell just happened to him; in