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Quote by Tom Wheeler

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From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future

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Tom Wheeler

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“Included in the GSM standard for mobile devices was the ability to use the mobile network's control channel (the parhway that controls the call but doesn't carry the call itself) to send short alphanumeric messages. It was envisioned principally as a means for one-way communication from the company to the subscriber (such as "your bill is due"). That changed when the functionality was discovered by Norwegian teenagers in the late 1980s.”

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Book:From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future
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“By the mid-1980s, [Stephen Jay Gould] had emerged as a major public figure, using his background as a paleontologist to dive into controversies with radical stances on the ways new species emerge and how evolutionary change comes about. His [popular history of life] college class was composed of around six hundred students who, taking it as a distributional requirement, were unlikely to become science majors. This audience proved an ideal focal group for Gould to try out his new theories and presentations. Every Tuesday and Thursday in the fall he held forth, lecturing with dramatic flourish to undergraduates who either sat rapt in the front rows or sprawled sleeping in the rear ones.”

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Book:Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
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“...We are long overdue for an update to the empirical scientific evidence that, despite our racial differences, demonstrates humankind’s overarching shared foundations as biological, cultural, and social beings. Awareness of the fascinating research unfolding in the arena of nature–nurture and the human condition promises to be a step in that direction.”

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Book:Science in Black and White: How Biology and Environment Shape Our Racial Divide
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“Popular-science news about quantum mechanics is to me as baffling as it is frustrating. Hand me an equation, and I can deal with it. But if you tell me that quantum mechanics allows one to separate a cat from its grin or that an experiment shows "an irreconcilable mismatch between the friends and the Wigners," I'll back out of the room quietly before anyone demands I explain this mess. I have suffered through countless well-intended introductions to quantum mechanics featuring quantum shoes, quantum coins, quantum boxes, and entire zoos of quantum animals that went in and out of those boxes. If you actually understand those explanations, I salute you, because if I hadn't known already how quantum mechanics works, I still wouldn't know.”

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Book:Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
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