Peter Gasston

I read a lot. For pleasure, for work, and for my newsletter, The Thoughtful Net, which is a little of both pleasure and work. As well as books I read a lot of online articles, especially long-form; I save a lot of links to Pocket, which is synced to my Kobo eReader, and then I read on my commute to and from work—averaging probably five or six articles per day. I share the articles that I like to my colleagues, on my Twitter, and a rare few exceptional ones to my newsletter.

What I enjoy very much is to collect quotes (or quotations, if you’re that type of person). A nice turn of phrase or a point that makes me stop and reflect, or think of something entirely differently, always gets saved to my Keep—with the hope that it will one day spark a new line of thought in me, or be added to a presentation deck to support my argument.

In this article I present the quotes I read this year that I felt were worth saving and sharing. The quotes aren’t necessarily from this year (some of them date back to the 19th Century) but they were new to me. Most of them, in some way, are linked to technology, which is both pleasure and work to me.

I’d like to present a recording of my latest talk, People Don’t Change. It’s about the history of modern human behaviour, and technology, and how the meeting of those two affects society today. I presented it at Front End London in August, and I’m really proud of it because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time—if you’re interested to hear it, the story of how I wrote it is below the video.