Nick Harkaway Quotes
It's not that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic, it's that any technology taking place beyond the threshold of our senses is.
Harkaway, Nick. The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World. John Murray, 2012.
In 2006, the George W. Bush administration had contracted with Boeing for a $5 Billion network of motion sensors and camera towers on part of the Mexican border. This was after a 2004 previous contract for $2.5 billion had failed. The system did not work very reliably, often warning of border crossers that turned out to be small animals. The system was too complex for the staff of the border patrol to handle and unlike the military did not bring in or train highly technical personnel to replace the regular border patrol agents who were not very well educated and had a hard time learning the now digital technology. The Bush administration spent the first $1 Billion of the $5 Billion project when further failures finally persuaded the administration to end this failed scheme despite the President's statement herein.
Nicholas Cornwell (born 1972), better known by his pen name Nick Harkaway, is a British novelist and commentator. He is the author of the novels The Gone-Away World, Angelmaker, Tigerman, and Gnomon; and a non-fiction study of the digital world, The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World.
