“I hadn’t known that,” I said. “I always tend to assume there’s an infinite amount of money out there.” “There might as well be,” Arsibalt said, “but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.”
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
But in order to get married, I needed a job, and in order to get a job, I needed a Ph.D.
Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time
Sie trugen auch solche Portemonnaies mit Kette an ihren Sackhosen, dazu kurze schwarze T-Shirts mit Heavy-Metal-Aufdruck, und wenn sie sich hinsetzten, sah man von hinten die Arschfalte über dem Hosenbund. Sie hatten CD-Spieler dabei, knallten sie neben unsere Computer auf den Tisch und setzten sich Kopfhörer auf, groß wie Ohrenschützer, die sie nur manchmal anhoben, um sich während des Tippens gegenseitig etwas zuzurufen, das die Musik betraf. Die Bildschirme nahmen eine ungewohnte, dunkle Farbe an, und es liefen Buchstaben und Zahlenketten darüber, denen sie nur schwache Beachtung schenkten. Ihre Rücken waren rund, sie benutzten die Lehnen der Stühle nicht, und sie tranken den Kaffee nicht, der auf Rufus’ ausdrückliche Anweisung für sie gekocht wurde. Nach einer Dreiviertelstunde liefen die Computer besser als vor dem Absturz, ohne dass auch nur der angefangene Brief einer Sekretärin verloren gegangen wäre, ganz zu schweigen von Verlusten in der Datenbank.
Juli Zeh: Adler und Engel
People have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of the other, more obvious needs.
Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn’t live without story had been driven into the concents or into jobs like Yul’s. All others had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure? Something with a beginning, middle, and end in which you played a significant part? We avout had it ready-made because we were a part of this project of learning new things. Even if it didn’t always move fast enough for people like Jesry, it did move.
Fraa Orolo in Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Doing a job, that is what we give in return for money and other favors, often in an organization with somebody above, somebody below or on the side. Work, that is to create. The two do not exclude each other.
Johan Galtung: Johan Lackland
You know you can't deny it
The world's a little more fucked up everyday
