“But Dad... what if I just beat people up with my baton? Wouldn’t they have to do whatever I say?” Pitar laughed. “That’s been tried. It never works … - Bruce Sterling

Working seriously, improving your taste and perception and understanding, knowing what you are and where you came from, not only improves your work in the present, but gives you a chance of influencing the future and links you to the best work of the past. It gives you a place to take a solid stand.

I'm sure you could play some kind of computer game with very intelligent, very small, invisible computers...You could have some entertaining way to play with them, or more likely they would have some entertaining way to play with you.

The Dark Age world had all kinds of potential issues that might bother Anita Atkinson: climate crisis, state collapse, financial ruin, mass extinction, catastrophic population dieback. None of those things bothered Anita, though, because she didn’t understand long words.