The Conquest of Ubiquity – Paul Valéry (1928)

> Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual- or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign. Just as we are accustomed, if not enslaved, to the various forms of energy that pour into our homes, we shall find it perfectly natural to receive the ultrarapid variations or oscillations that our sense organs gather in and integrate to form all we know. I do not know whether a philosopher has ever dreamed of a company engaged in the home delivery of Sensory Reality.

I like the very Beauty and the Beast-like children story he tells about ever piece of furniture having its own life!

And it's wonderful to rediscover through his eyes how today's mundane things - accessing musing and art anywhere - are actually marvellous.