Interconnectivity Quotes

“In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.”
― Elon Musk

“I’m fighting a losing battle. I can’t tell this story the way it should be told. This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates, and the infinite branching of cause and effect - and these people, these real people who actually existed. I’m barely able to mention a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their thoughts. I keep banging my head against the wall of history. And I look up and see, growing all over it - ever higher and denser, like a creeping ivy - the unmappable pattern of causality... How many forgotten heroes sleep in history's great cemetery?”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“Everything depends on everything else, doesn’t it? That’s interconnectivity for you – it’s a bitch.”
― Alastair Reynolds, On the Steel Breeze

“...at some indiscernible moment he sees all of us clearly — every face distinct, like immiscible droplets of water, all of us individuals constituting an interconnected sea of beings.”
― David Michael Miller, The Becomer

“Gazing into the heavens on a starry night a person sees the reflection of their own soul staring back at them. Perceiving our microscopic place in the revolving cosmos, we search to ascertain a meaning for our existence; we stretch our minds to comprehend a reason that justifies our fleeting journey in a universe composed of dark energy. Comprehension of a full-bodied meaning for living seems to lie just beyond my grasp. Perhaps I struggle dialing into a meaning for life because living entails adapting to a constant state of chaos. Can I harmonize the noisy commotion and distracting clutter in my life? I need to overcome personal inertia by learning to become comfortable with these changing times. In actuality, I have no choice but to capitulate to the evolution of facets in the world. Everything in the universe is undergoing constant change. Alike all humankind, I am also in the process of evolving. Who I was will undoubtedly affect who I will become. Who I am now is not who I will always be. The demands imposed upon us by the exterior world prevent stagnation of our interior world. We must all respond to change by either growing or dying. Even a blockhead such as me proves alterable, because inherent mutability ensures the survival of all persons. The entire world is interconnected; we are part of the cosmic consciousness. Many factors beyond our direct control influence us.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Ecofeminist analysis is generally much more expansive than environmentalism and feminism.... Ecofeminism draws on ecological, socialist, and feminist thought, incorporating a handful of social justice movements, such as feminism, peace activism, labor movements, women’s health care, anti-nuclear, environmental, and animal liberation.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice

“I want you to write a narrative, a narrative from the future of your city, and you can date it, set it out one year from now, five years from now, a decade from now, a generation from now, and write it as a case study looking back, looking back at the change that you wanted in your city, looking back at the cause that you were championing, and describing the ways that that change and that cause came, in fact, to succeed. Describe the values of your fellow citizens that you activated, and the sense of moral purpose that you were able to stir. Recount all the different ways that you engaged the systems of government, of the marketplace, of social institutions, of faith organizations, of the media. Catalog all the skills you had to deploy, how to negotiate, how to advocate, how to frame issues, how to navigate diversity in conflict, all those skills that enabled you to bring folks on board and to overcome resistance. What you'll be doing when you write that narrative is you'll be discovering how to read power, and in the process, how to write power. So share what you write, do you what you write, and then share what you do.
[...] Together, we can create a great network of city that will be the most powerful collective laboratory for self-government this planet has ever seen. We have the power to do that.”
― Eric Liu

“Civic imagination and innovation and creativity are emerging from local ecosystems now and radiating outward, and this great innovation, this great wave of localism that's now arriving, and you see it in how people eat and work and share and buy and move and live their everyday lives, this isn't some precious parochialism, this isn't some retreat into insularity, no. This is emergent. The localism of our time is networked powerfully. And so, for instance, consider the ways that strategies for making cities more bike-friendly have spread so rapidly from Copenhagen to New York to Austin to Boston to Seattle. Think about how experiments in participatory budgeting, where everyday citizens get a chance to allocate and decide upon the allocation of city funds. Those experiments have spread from Porto Alegre, Brazil to here in New York City, to the wards of Chicago. Migrant workers from Rome to Los Angeles and many cities between are now organizing to stage strikes to remind the people who live in their cities what a day without immigrants would look like. In China, all across that country, members of the New Citizens' Movement are beginning to activate and organize to fight official corruption and graft, and they're drawing the ire of officials there, but they're also drawing the attention of anti-corruption activists all around the world. In Seattle, where I'm from, we've become part of a great global array of cities that are now working together bypassing government altogether, national government altogether, in order to try to meet the carbon reduction goals of the Kyoto Protocol. All of these citizens, united, are forming a web, a great archipelago of power that allows us to bypass brokenness and monopolies of control.”
― Eric Liu

“All roads in this mystical world tragically lead to death. Every personal narrative repeats the same rhetorical trope. Memento mori (‘remember that you must die’) and memento mortis (‘remember death’) are the Latin medieval designation of the theory and practice of reflecting on mortality, pondering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. The title to metaphysical poet John Donne’s poem Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris (‘Now, this Bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.’) expresses this sentiment of humankind’s painful morality and the interconnectedness of humanity. Remember death – that I must die – is my faithful traveling companion.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls