Mar 18
We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called "technology" at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers — as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe...
— Ursula Le Guin, from the essay "A Few Words with Visitor from Outer Space" in "The Wave in the Mind: Medieval Studies, Writing on Writing". (Shambhala Publications, 2004) (via @PatrickHeizer)
