Golumbia: I argue that we must also keep in mind the possibility of de-emphasizing computerization, resisting the intrusion of computational paradigms into every part of the social structure, and resisting too strong a focus on computationalism as the solution to our social problems.
Peter Norvig: PowerPoint doesn't kill meetings. People kill meetings. But using PowerPoint is like having a loaded AK-47 on the table: You can do very bad things with it.
Golumbia: The wave of upbeat "democratization of information" writers seem to look almost exclusively at what one might think of as the "good side" of the web, and in so doing nearly ignore the countervailing tendencies that undermine the movements they champion. These writers also endorse a radical populism that around the world only sometimes aligns itself with democratic social justice.
Freeman Dyson: I beseech you, in the words of Oliver Cromwell, to think it possible you may be mistaken.
Golumbia: How do we guarantee that computers and other cultural products are not so pleasurable that they discourage us from engaging in absolutely necessary forms of social interaction? I see the current emphasis on the "social web" as not so much an account of a real phenomenon as it is a reaction to what we all know inside -- that computers are pulling us away from face-to-face social interactions and in so doing removing something critical from our lived experience.
Niall Ferguson: Chimerica is really the key to how the global financial system works, and has been now for about a decade. Both sides stand to lose from a breakdown of Chimerica, which is why both sides are affirming a commitment to it. The Chinese believe in Chimerica maybe even more than Americans do. They have nowhere else to go.
Golumbia: It is legitimate and even necessary to operate as if it is possible that computationalism will eventually fail to bear the philosophical-conceptual burden that we today put on it. We have to learn how to critique even that which helps us.
Noam Cohen's friend: Privacy is serious. It is serious the moment the data gets collected, not the moment it is released.
Golumbia: For at least one hundred years and probably much longer, modern societies have been built on the assumption that more rationality and more techne (and more capital) are precisely the solutions to the extremely serious problems that beset our world and our human societies. Yet the evidence that this is not the right solution can be found everywhere.
Robert McNamara: Rationality will not save us.
The Cultural Logic of Computation | Excerpts II | 
