Quotes:
>1990: "A word has been invented: Meme. M-E-M-E. A meme is not the smallest unit of heredity. A meme is the smallest unit of meaning, of an idea... we as artists are attempting to create memes which enter an environment of other memes that are in competition with each other, and out of this competition of memes, ever more appropriate, adaptive and suitable ideas can gather and link themselves into higher and higher organisms.
>The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation
>We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears.
>Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles.
>You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding
>If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan
>The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.
>Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien... What is driving religious feeling today is a wish for contact with this other universe.