I'm listening to the audiobook of Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene at the moment, read by Jeremy Northam. I think I've read it before, but thankfully I can't remember the ending.
Greene has some great turns of phrase:
…He would reason about people’s conduct as though a man were as simple a figure as, say, two sticks laid across each other; whereas a man is much more like the sea whose movements are too complicated to explain, and whose depths may bring up God only knows what at any moment.
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From The Salmon of Doubt:
We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
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