QuoteProject
In the face of technology, everything becomes a little atavistic.
Don Delillo
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that advancements in technology can evoke primitive or ancient instincts within humans.

Don DeLillo's quote reflects on how the rapid pace of technological advancement can lead individuals to exhibit more primal or instinctual behaviors. As we become increasingly surrounded by technology, it may prompt us to revert to our basic human nature, contrasting the complexities and demands of modern life with the simplicity of our earlier existence. Essentially, in the face of innovation, our essential humanity and atavistic traits can surface, reminding us of our roots.

Themes

TechnologyAtavisticInstinctsHuman NatureModern Life

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a discussion about how smartphones influence our social behaviors.

More from Don Delillo

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.
Don DelilloRead
American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.
Don DelilloRead
For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.
Don DelilloRead
I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.
Don DelilloRead
[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. 
He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way he’s carrying a gun. 
This is one of the essential images in American mythology.
Don DelilloRead

Similar quotes

Holding back technology to reserve business models is like allowing blacksmiths to veto the internal combustion engine in order to protect their horseshoes.
Don TapscottRead
The web's earliest architects and pioneers fought for their vision of freedom on the Internet at a time when it was still small forums for conversation and text-based gaming. They thought the web could be adequately governed by its users without their needing to empower anyone to police it.
Jenna WorthamRead
If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
Brian KernighanRead
I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.
William GaddisRead
I said the screen will kill the reader, and it has: the movie screen in the beginning, the television screen, and now the coup de grace, the computer screen.
Philip RothRead
There's no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.
Bill GatesRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.