Brad DeLong explains why life will never be dull. Here is just one bit:
As long as I think of these as “texts,” they are dry and boring. But there is a key to making them exciting: to remember that they are not texts: they are people–people urgently trying to talk to me, to tell me something very important that they think I desperately need to know…
When evening comes Niccolo Machiavelli enters his personal library. There he talks to his friends–his books, or rather those who wrote the books in his library, or rather those components of their minds that are instantiated in the hardware-and-software combinations of linen, ink, and symbols of Gutenberg Information Technology. They are ‘ancient men’ who receive him ‘with affection,’ and for four hours he ‘ask[s] them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and… I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death…’
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