james burke

• "it's no use giving information technology to everybody and that's all, just give them the toys and let them play. it would be like putting a loaded machine gun into the hands of an ape.
  
  first of all i think, in the chaotic and innovatory world of tomorrow if we try to organize ourselves with the old ways of division of labor top-down method, there will be anarchy. because in that old culture of scarcity the way control was maintained, stability was kept through the application of what you might describe as "mushroom management": keep them in the dark, and feed them a lot of manure.
  
  and anyway it's too late for that. people anywhere already know that they know just enough to know, that there's still a lot they don't know, but they need to. a lot of people out there working out various ways of making knowledge available in what you might call a "post-reductionist" form. that's the fancy word for it. i took it off the web. that match the kind of thinking the technology makes possible."