Martin Lee, of Waterstone's
Bookshop, quoted in "The Times", 31st July 1997:
Almost
nobody believes that the Internet is ever going to account for more than 10 per
cent of sales.
Pieter Dirk Uys, the South African
satirist, speaking on BBC World Service:
Democracy
is all very good and well - but it's TOO good to share with just anyone.
Another from the same:
The
future is certain - it is just the past that is unpredictable.
From "Man at the Top" by Richard Wolff (page 9)
Not
everyone may be called to be a shining button on the waistcoat of the world....
From the French Minitel service Assistances
au Décès:
La
mort donne a notre personalité une dimension nouvelle.
Pablo Picasso, in response to a complaint from Gertrude
Stein that the portrait for which she had sat did not look a bit like her:
It
will. It will.
Instructions to Clergy, from a Bishop
Please
send me a current list of your parishioners
broken down by age and sex
Notes toward a 25-hour city
25
hour city inevitable soon due to increasing leisure from automation and the
need to use expensive equipment continuously to recoup investment in a few
years. But, indeed, why must we wait another 10 years?
- from the International Times, a 1960's "underground" newspaper
edited by Tom McGrath assisted by David Z Mairowitz,
based at 102 Southampton Row and produced fortnightly; this quotation comes
from issue number 7 which carried the memorable headline "Arrest the Home
Secretary!".
Database interrogation in the 1980s
The communications systems upon which all these services are
based are at best indifferent to your presence, and at times appear even
hostile or dumbly insolent. Requests must be precise: ambiguity is not
tolerated. Terminals will behave strangely: there are just too many designs.
Please seek advice and persevere. Systems will improve with use.
- a prescient observation by Peter Stone, taken from
the Directory of University Library Catalogues on JANET [Joint Academic NETwork] compiled for SCONUL [Society
of COllege, National and University Libraries) by the University of Sussex
Library, September 1986.