The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along th...e primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one's way to where the country is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A computer does not think, it feels nothing, and what it is said to "know"--bits of information all cast in the digital mode--has ...no fringe. Nor has it a memory, only storage room. On any point called for, the answer is all or none. Vagueness, intelligent confusion, original punning on words or ideas never occur, the internal hookups being unchangeable; they were determined once for all by the true minds that made the machine and program. When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity; the greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, there is n...o danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of the danger of the head's being turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of ho...lding him hard to some one point which nature has taken to heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and... one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul?--A thought too bold,--a dream too wild.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The difference between digital and analogic forms is exemplified in the two different types of watches and clocks now available. A... digital watch presents the time in discrete units. It is either 12:57 or 12:58 (or some discrete unit in between, such as 12:57 and 10 seconds as opposed to 12:57 and 11 seconds). With the analogic watch, however, time is continuous. A person who sees the time as "12:57 and 10 seconds" on a digital watch, may see the time as "about one o'clock" on an analogic watch. A similar difference exists between a digital calculator and the analogic slide rule. The slide rule is excellent for making "approximations," but it cannot yield precise digital data.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Speedometers, for example, may be digital and give a numeric readout, or analog and produce a lengthening rectangle (or rotating p...ointer). The analog output is less precise, but puts one's speed in some perspective. An 82 and a 28 are almost indistinguishable, but a long rectangle is quite distinct from a short one, and if its length is changing, that too is manifest. The same trade-off is present with clocks and watches, digital timepieces producing precision, but lacking in all the associations a clockface can engender.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission a...s he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »