Paul Baran Quotes

• I've... learned that it's a hell of a lot easier to just build something than to try to convince somebody who doesn't believe it's possible.

  Paul Baran

  Believe, Trying, I've Learned

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• No one is ever as shocked and surprised as when the inevitable occurs.

  Paul Baran

  Inevitable, Shocked

  "Founding Father" by Stewart Brand, www.wired.com. March 1, 2001.

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• We will soon be living in an era in which we cannot guarantee survivability of any single point. However, we can still design systems in which system destruction requires the enemy to pay the price of destroying n of n stations. If n is made sufficiently large, it can be shown that highly survivable system structures can be built.

  Paul Baran

  Pay The Price, Design, Enemy

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• The greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects, their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves do not believe, and that it teaches [in the words of Leo Marx] 'the essential meaninglessness of all creations of the mind: words, images, and ideas.'

  Paul Baran

  Believe, Men, Skills

  "The Commercial Tidal Wave" by Robert W. McChesney & John Bellamy Foster in "Monthly Review", March 2003.

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• History has shown that there are very few mechanisms as effective at maintaining the status quo as a set of institutionalized regulations. Once set in regulatory concrete, reconsideration of the basic underlying assumptions is very difficult. While it will be an uphill fight to re-examine the basic underlying assumptions of any law or administrative rule, it is clearly not impossible. It will just take longer than if not so well institutionalized.

  Paul Baran

  Fighting, Maintaining The Status Quo, Law

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