Karl Schroeder Quotes

In the end, her written ideology, the philosophy and new morals she had preached, were all means to an end. That end could never be reached; Armiger had taught her that. If so, then what mattered their disappointment, their disillusionment? They would hate her for leaving them alive, but they would be alive, and a life lived in bitterness was still better than a death colored by useless fanaticism.

What’s real is what’s valuable. Everything else is just an illusion.

They see something they may never have seen before: a normal human reacting normally to a traumatic situation. Livia, these people have been insulated within inscape their whole lives. They have lived in a world where their merest whim could be granted with a thought. Reality has always conformed to their desires—never the other way around. Now they find themselves in a world that obstinately refuses to change itself to fit their imagination. They literally have no idea how to respond.

It's not that simple.
Ah! That phrase is Male for 'I'm afraid to.'

Even the gods fight boredom in vain.

But what good's abundance if nobody can experience it?

Our whole life we’ve lived in a world of softened edges and easy decisions. All except once. One time, when someone had to look at the world through adult eyes and even the grown-ups who survived the crash with us failed the test. Someone had to look at the world as it was, and make the hard decisions that were necessary—not to romanticize, not to retreat into illusions. You did it then. I’m asking you to do it again. See what’s really going on here. See what’s real.

Technologies are control systems, she said. They dictate your reality.

She looked up at the towering wisdom and felt a sudden love for it—as if these books were family.

You know I was once a human being, too, Doran. I remember how hard it was to marshal all the resources I needed to cure myself of the affliction. I also remember, quite clearly, how I always told people I had no interest in self-deification. It was a useful and sometimes necessary shield against interference.
Blow off, said Doran. Unless you have some specific threat you want to use on me.
Choronzon laughed. Not a threat. Just curiosity as to why someone so violently opposed to improving on the human model should decide to go against all his principles.
Sometimes, said Doran icily, mature people do things they don't want to do. It's called following higher principles. But someone without mortal concerns, say, like yourself, wouldn't understand that.

Her own sincerity returned to her now like the remembrance of a crime.

She started threatening the stability of the ruling classes, at least in their own eyes. No ruler who does that ever stands for long.

I am the Government, she said. I am a force of omniscience and unparalleled power within the human part of the Archipelago. I am a public-domain distributed artificial intelligence. I have made all human institutions redundant, for I am the personal and intimate friend of each and every one of the trillion humans under my domain. I am the selfless advocate of each of them, from the lowliest to the greatest.
The only problem is...Well, nobody listens to me much anymore.

The great commandment of the narratives is that your life must be meaningful, said Charon. If knowing the truth strips the meaning away, then the truth must be suppressed.

It's time to abandon the plans of the entity that enslaved me all these centuries, he said. And time to start making my own.