Thus spake Zarathustra.

“I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.”

“‘It [Google] can show me everything?’ her mother asked, now leaning in, full of wonder.

“‘Everything. What do you want to see?’

“The answer came through tears. ‘Show me my mother in the afterlife.’”

“As we embrace a technology’s gifts, we usually fail to consider what they ask from us in return — the subtle, hardly noticeable payments we make in exchange for their marvelous service. We don’t notice, for example, that the gaps in our schedules have disappeared because we’re too busy delighting in the amusements that fill them. We forget the games that childhood boredom forged because boredom itself has been outlawed. Why would we bother to register the end of solitude, of ignorance, of lack? Why would we care that an absence has disappeared?”

“The whole exercise of civil defense was totally ridiculous, and I am sure this was not lost on McLuhan when he proposed media studies as ‘civil defense against media fallout.’ Just as nuclear fallout was not visible and had a widespread effect on the public imagination, media fallout is also invisible and has a similar widespread effect.”