Quotes from Michel Serres

The result may be a realignment of our socio-political landscape by the advent of a fifth power—the power of data—which is independent of the four other powers: legislative, executive, and judicial powers, and the media.

Algorithmic thought arose before the invention of geometry in Greece, and reemerged in Europe with Pascal and Leibniz, who invented two calculating machines and, like Thumbelina, used pseudonyms.

The new victory of these old procedures stems from the fact that the algorithmic and the procedural both rely on codes.

Qui regle à sa guise les code at leur circulation dans l'espace peut laisser reposer les veilleurs.

A code resembled a coin with two sides, heads and tails, which were contradictory: both accessible and secret.

The given - forgive me - what is marketable, is only given - forgive me - is only sold in and through language. [...] Triumphant, the word redeems anything that could lend taste or aroma and transubstantiates it into something seen and read and heard, the channels that are peculiar to it. This - what you eat and drink - is the body and blood of the word. Here - where you buy it - lies the grave of bread and wine, body and blood, dead and resuscitated as messages.

When I think a given concept, I am entirely this concept, when I think tree, I am the tree, when I think river, I am the river, when I think number, I am through and through and from head to toe, number. that is the unquestionable experience of thinking.

Who am I, beyond the joy coming from this shudder of awakening, the growth of this green ivy, this dancing flame, this living fire?

The real passage occurs in the middle. Whatever direction determined by the swim, the ground lies dozens or hundreds of yards below the belly or miles behind and ahead. The voyager is alone. One must cross in order to know solitude, which is signaled by the disappearance of all reference points.