Friday, November 18, 2022

More Logs On The Fire

In the Arthur Clarke story (one of the few I find worth re-reading 60 years on....) he writes (in the '50's) about a computer engineer who has just installed a computer in a Tibetan monastery so the monks can work out the 9 billion names of God a bit more expeditiously. They believe by doing this they will fulfill the purpose of humanity and the universe. The engineer doesn't care, it's a job for him. As he's riding a donkey (IIRC) down from the remote monastery, he looks up and the narrator notes: "There is always time for one last thing," as he notices that, one by one, the stars are going out.

Reinstating famous people even as he asks if there's anybody out there who can actually run Twitter, is Musk doing that one last thing there's time for.

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