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41 " He proposed a steam-powered pneumatic tube system to carry telegraph forms the short distance from the Stock Exchange to the main telegraph office. "
― Tom Standage , The Victorian Internet
42 " Spices were certainly regarded as antidotes to earthly squalor in another, more mystical sense. They were thought to be splinters of paradise that had found their way into the ordinary world. "
― Tom Standage , An Edible History of Humanity
43 " All this will come as a surprise to modern Internet users who may assume that today’s social-media environment is unprecedented. But many of the ways in which we share, consume, and manipulate information, even in the Internet era, build upon habits and conventions that date back centuries. "
― Tom Standage , Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years
44 " There is no hope of any major increase in scientific knowledge by grafting or adding the new on top of the old," Bacon declared in his book The New Logic, published in 1620. "The restoration of the sciences must start from the bottom-most foundations—unless we prefer to go round in perpetual circles at a contemptibly slow rate. "
― Tom Standage , A History of the World in 6 Glasses
45 " (In the computer era we have returned to the custom of scrolling through texts, but we now scroll up and down, rather than right to left as the Romans did.) "
46 " Post Horses and Conveyances of every description may be ordered by the electric telegraph to be in readiness on the arrival of a train, at either Paddington or Slough Station. "
47 " It is a sign of a medium's immaturity when one of the main topics of discussion is the medium itself. "
48 " Anyone who started a quarrel had to atone for it by buying a dish of coffee for everyone present. "
49 " ...people enjoy being able to articulate their interests and define themselves by selectively compiling and resharing content created by others "
50 " The mere act of sharing something can, in other words, be a form of self-expression. "
51 " When coffee became popular in Oxford and the coffee houses selling it began to multiply, the university authorities tried to clamp down, worrying that coffee houses promoted idleness and distracted members of the university from their studies "
52 " Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. —Marcus Tullius Cicero "
53 " Although it is no longer customary to offer visitors a straw through which to drink from a communal vat of beer, today tea or coffee may be offered from a shared pot, or a glass of wine or spirits from a shared bottle. And when drinking alcohol in a social setting, the clinking of glasses symbolically reunites the glasses into a single vessel of shared liquid. These are traditions with very ancient origins. "
54 " When George Washington ran for election to Virginia's local assembly, the House of Burgesses, in 1758, his campaign team handed out twenty-eight gallons of rum, fifty gallons of rum punch, thirty-four of wine, forty-six of beer, and two of cider—in a county with only 391 voters. "
55 " Descendants of de Clieu's original plant were also proliferating in the region, in Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. Ultimately, Brazil became the world's dominant coffee supplier, leaving Arabia far behind. "
56 " THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was a period defined by the struggle for individual political, economic, and personal liberty against various forms of oppression, and marked by war, genocide, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. "
57 " There were no musicians or dancers, for Plato believed that educated men ought to be capable of entertaining themselves by "speaking and listening in turns in an orderly manner. "
58 " At the time there were no printing presses and no paper. "
59 " In the United States radio listeners were gathered up by networks that saw them as consumers to be sold to; in Britain they were the masses to be instructed and improved; in Germany they were the people to be indoctrinated and misled. "
60 " This new, telegraphic writing style also influenced public speaking: short sound bites became popular because they were easier for stenographers to transcribe, and cheaper and quicker for reporters to transmit. "