The nerd flavor of masculinity has overwhelmed the macho kind in real-life power dynamics, and therefore in popular culture. - Ellen Ullman

To listen to Mr. Engelbart that day almost five years ago was to realize that the computer industry, when it started, was not simply about becoming a chief executive or retiring on stock options at 35. It was to remember that real innovation — the stuff that made computers so much more than "crummy factors of production" — comes from mysterious places, wild people, dreamers and tinkerers, and to remember all the skepticism they had to endure.

In this universe of privately controlled education, each charter school can choose the curricula of its choice: Evolution is just a theory, the Bible is a literal history, dinosaurs and human beings simultaneously inhabited the earth, men are superior to women, white Christians to everyone else, and so on. Private and charter schools are like websites: they can foster any belief, shatter the idea that there is anything called truth,

The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often talked about: we computer experts barely know what we're doing. We're good at fussing and figuring out. We function well in a sea of unknowns. Our experience has only prepared us to deal with confusion. A programmer who denies this is probably lying, or else is densely unaware of himself.