“Your body moves always in the present, the dividing line between the past and the future, but your mind is more free.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
For a brief time in the 1850s, the telegraph companies of England and the United States thought that they could (and should)… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
One measure of twentieth-century time is the supersonic three and three-quarter hours it takes the Concorde to fly from New York to… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
For much of the twentieth century, 1984 was a year that belonged to the future - a strange, gray future at that.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
You can't waste time and you can't save time; you can only choose what you do at any given moment.... — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Writing comes into being to retain information across time and across space. Before writing, communication is evanescent and local; sounds carry a… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Every time a new technology comes along, we feel we're about to break through to a place where we will not be… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
In spacetime, all events are baked together: a four-dimensional continuum. Past and future are no more privileged than left and right or… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
We say that time passes, time goes by, and time flows. Those are metaphors. We also think of time as a medium… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
One of the ways the telegraph changed us as humans was it gave us a new sense of what time it is.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
For the modern physicist, reality is the whole thing, past and future joined in a single history. The sensation of now is… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
It is not true that people who accomplish things don't waste time and that people who waste time don't accomplish things. The… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Particle physicists may freeze a second, open it up, and explore its dappled contents like surgeons pawing through an abdomen, but in… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
It's fair to say that Wikipedia has spent far more time considering the philosophical ramifications of categorization than Aristotle and Kant ever… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
One of the ways the telegraph changed us as humans was it gave us a new sense of what time it is.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“Her exposition took the form of notes lettered A through G, extending to nearly three times the length of Menabrea’s essay. They… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Neither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you, because time is not a thing you have lost. It is not… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
As for memes, the word 'meme' is a cliche, which is to say it's already a meme. We all hear it all… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Nanosecond precision matters for worldwide communications systems. It matters for navigation by Global Positioning System satellite signals: an error of a billionth… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“Why do we need time travel, when we already travel through space so far and fast? For history. For mystery. For nostalgia.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
I'll cheerfully confess to spending a lot of time playing completely disgusting computer games that have no redeeming social value. — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Intuition was not just visual but also auditory and kinesthetic. Those who watched Feynman in moments of intense concentration came away with… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
You know, entropy is associated thermodynamically, in systems involving heat, with disorder. And in an analogous way, information is associated with disorder, which seems… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“No one has even a definitive spelling for Cawdrey’s name (Cowdrey, Cawdry). But then, no one agreed on the spelling of most names: they… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“Where, then, is any particular gene—say, the gene for long legs in humans? This is a little like asking where is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Alphabetical order had to be invented to help people organize the first dictionaries. On the other hand, we may have reached a point where… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
A book is not necessarily made of paper. A book is not necessarily made to be read on a Kindle. A book is a… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“From this point of view, the laws of science represent data compression in action. A theoretical physicist acts like a very clever coding algorithm.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Children and scientists share an outlook on life. If I do this, what will happen? is both the motto of the child at play… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“Your body moves always in the present, the dividing line between the past and the future, but your mind is more free. It can… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
People worry about Twitter. Twitter is banal. It's 140-character messages. By definition, you can hardly say anything profound. On the other hand, we communicate.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
