Only the dead are free of the influence of others. - Karl Schroeder

The being was trying to get him to think about what he was saying, not just recite.

Each technology equated to some human value or set of values, she saw. She’d known that. But on Earth, in the Archipelago and everywhere else, technologies came first, and values changed to accommodate them. Under the locks, values were the keys to access or shut away technologies...
The locks proclaimed that there were no neutral technologies. The devices and methods people used didn’t just represent certain values—they were those values, in some way.

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