The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
Interpretation
Modern communications create pressure to respond instantly to notifications, which can be overwhelming.
Russell Baker's quote highlights the dual nature of modern communication technologies; while they are miraculous in their ability to connect us instantly, they also impose a constant pressure to respond immediately. This Pavlovian reaction to notifications can lead to stress and a lack of focus, as individuals often feel compelled to engage with their devices at the expense of more meaningful interactions and personal peace.
In practice
During a presentation about work-life balance, use this quote to emphasize the importance of disconnecting from technology.
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
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Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.
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Objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
What would the infrastructure of the Internet look like if mass surveillance wasn't its business model?
A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.
The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.
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There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers.
The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.
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