"Then: I google "time-series visualization" and start work on a new version of my model, thinking that maybe I can impress her with a prototype. I am… - Robin Sloan

I am really into the type of girl you can impress with a prototype.

Corvina’s got it wrong. Penumbra’s schemes didn’t fail because he’s a hopeless crackpot. If Corvina’s right, it means nobody should ever try anything new and risky. Maybe Penumbra’s schemes failed because he didn’t have enough help. Maybe he didn’t have a Mat or a Neel, an Ashley or a Kat — until now.

There had to be a scale somewhere — the scale of stars, the scale of far-off cosmic super-beings — upon which we ourselves, we humans with our cities and bridges and subterranean markets, would look like the lactobacilli and the yeast.

The buzz about Google these days is that it’s like America itself: still the biggest game in town, but inevitably and irrevocably on the decline. Both are superpowers with unmatched resources, but both are faced with fast-growing rivals, and both will eventually be eclipsed. For America, that rival is China; for Google, it’s Facebook...But here’s the difference: staring down the inevitable, American pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want.