But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an… - Arthur C. Clarke

Our age is in many ways unique, full of events and phenomena that never occurred before and can never happen again. They distort our thinking, making us believe that what is true now will be true forever, though perhaps on a larger scale. Because we have annihilated distance on this planet, we imagine that we can do it once again. The facts are otherwise, and we see them more clearly if we forget the present and turn our minds towards the past.

We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return ... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation ... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.

All bureaucracies are the same. They drain the life out of the truly creative people and develop mindless paper-pushers as their critical mass.