“Back in 2015, a volunteer group called Bitnation set up something called the Blockchain Emergency ID. There’s not a lot of data on the project now, BE-ID - used public-key cryptography to generate unique IDs for people without their documents.… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share Image
“Discrimination is not just racial now. It’s also about the kind of body parts you have.” — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share Image
“here was a particular kind of energy in those early days, something I've only really found in startups. The regulars - the boring 9-to-5 people - haven’t invaded the world yet. All around you are people who practically buzz with mental adrenaline - the kind of people who sneer at words like policy and dress code and fill the office… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share
“Watching a parent die is a terrible task. My father, faced with something he could not talk down or browbeat into submission, spent his… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share Image
“Then I realized that the history of the world is largely a history of sustainable systems. Every so often a system comes along that completely changes the world. People never notice these systems until they're right there in their faces and all the alarm bells are going off. Agriculture. Christianity. Guns. The Industrial Age economy. P2P networks. Take any major… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share
“This is how we progress as humans. We went from horseless carriages to self-driving, self-organizing transport in a hundred and fifty years. We went from powered flight to putting a man on the moon in sixty years. We’ve always progressed in leaps and bounds. It is our ability, no, our duty, to do what is efficient, and to do what… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share
“What strange and thoughtless creatures we were, back in those days. We would go up to the rooftops to smoke, Wurth and I; and… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share Image
“Beautiful women have a following all their own. If that sounds misogynistic, I’m sorry, that’s the way the world works. Homer said the Greeks… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share Image
“This is the Number. It is in the things we do, the people we meet, the ID cards that we carry. It's part of our identities, our credit cards, our social interactions. It takes our influences, our biases, morals, lifestyles and turns them into a massive alternate reality that no-one can escape from. It lives on our phones, in our… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share
“Bunch of people go out to the Valley, create something new. Us out here in the world go hmm, that's interesting, and start using… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share Image
“Every New Yorker thinks they’re automatically better than everyone else in every other city on the planet: even their unnems were a better class… — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share Image
“This book is a story, and like all stories, it should be taken with a grain of salt.” — Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Copy Share Image
