Annalee Newitz People Quotations

When Usenet was eclipsed by websites in the late 1990s, people from that world - many of them programmers - wanted to bring the freewheeling, amazing discussions of Usenet to the web. And thus, RSS was born.

There are plenty of publicly-funded organizations and nonprofits that are trying to develop GMO crops that could help feed people in developing nations by producing disease-resistant or drought-resistant strains of staple crops like cassava or bananas.

The fact is that humans have been shaping the genetics of what they eat for thousands of years. Genetic engineering simply speeds up the process that used to take generations. Preventing people from getting things like golden rice or disease-resistant cassava destroys human life, and does not spare the environment in any way.

Even though I now know that it's likely the Earth will suffer through mega-volcanoes or meteor strikes that could take out millions or billions of people, I feel less anxious about it because I actually understand what the threats are. There's nothing like researching something exhaustively to make it less terrifying.

RSS, as a format and an idea, grew directly out of an internet culture that many people online today know nothing about: Usenet.

People who gentrify are usually new transplants to a city, changing it to suit their particular cultural needs and whims.

The myth that young people should leave the nest at 18, never to return, started with iconic American Benjamin Franklin.

As fears about the energy and environmental crises reach a fever pitch, we're all searching for solutions. And one possibility is that we could fix everything if we'd just shrink our population back down to about 2 billion people - which would put us roughly where we were at 80 years ago.

The novel 'World War Z' is told from the perspectives of so many people - speaking to the narrator - that there's no way a movie could capture all of them. Still, the idea of turning a zombie pandemic into a war story is fascinating and could have translated easily to film.

In many cities, it's become popular to hate 'gentrifiers,' rich people who move in and drive up housing prices - pushing everyone else out.

If outsider perspectives made 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Dark Knight' into fantastic franchises, imagine what would happen if you brought in the perspectives of women and people of color.

Before the 21st century, stories became popular because people talked about them in other publications or shared magazine and newspaper clippings with friends.

I am a big proponent of character arcs that show us how people change over time.