“I forget practical stuff all the time, but I also forget to look at the distance and contemplate the essential mysteries of the universe and the oneness of all things. A pair of glasses on which the temperature and chance of rain pops up, or someone tries to schedule me for a project or a drink, is not going to help with reveries about justice, meaning and the beautiful deep marine blue of nearly every dusk.

Furthermore, Google glasses probably aren’t going to spring pastel-coloured bubbles on you that say ‘It’s May Day! Overthrow tyranny,’ let alone ‘Don’t let corporations dictate your thoughts,’ or ‘It would be really meaningful to review the personal events of August 1997 in the light of what you know now.’ That between you and me stands a corporation every time we make contact – not just the post office or the phone company, but a titan that shares information with the National Security Administration – is dismaying. But that’s another subject: mine today is time.”

– Rebecca Solnit, in the London Review of Books, August 2013. Read the rest here.