Episode #318 from 3:07:52
Cities
Yeah, it depends the time. You write quite beautifully in Transformers. Once again, I think you opened the book in this way. I don't remember. From space describing Earth, it's such an interesting idea of what Earth is. Hitchhiker's Guide summarizing it as harmless or mostly harmless. It's a beautifully poetic thing. You open Transformers with "From space, it looks gray and crystalline, obliterating the blue-green colors of the living Earth. It is crisscrossed by regular patterns and convergence striations. There's a central amorphous density where these scratches seem lighter. This 'growth' does not look alive, although it has extended out along some lines and there is something grasping and parasitic about it. Across the globe, there are thousands of them varying in shape and detail, but all of them, gray, angular, inorganic, spreading. Yet at night they light up, glowing up the dark sky, suddenly beautiful. Perhaps these cankers on the landscape are in some sense living. There's a controlled flow of energy. There must be information and some form of metabolism, some turnover of materials. Are they alive? No, of course not. They are cities."
Why this moment matters
Yeah, it depends the time. You write quite beautifully in Transformers. Once again, I think you opened the book in this way. I don't remember. From space describing Earth, it's such an interesting idea of what Earth is. Hitchhiker's Guide summarizing it as harmless or mostly harmless. It's a beautifully poetic thing. You open Transformers with "From space, it looks gray and crystalline, obliterating the blue-green colors of the living Earth. It is crisscrossed by regular patterns and convergence striations. There's a central amorphous density where these scratches seem lighter. This 'growth' does not look alive, although it has extended out along some lines and there is something grasping and parasitic about it. Across the globe, there are thousands of them varying in shape and detail, but all of them, gray, angular, inorganic, spreading. Yet at night they light up, glowing up the dark sky, suddenly beautiful. Perhaps these cankers on the landscape are in some sense living. There's a controlled flow of energy. There must be information and some form of metabolism, some turnover of materials. Are they alive? No, of course not. They are cities."