How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
It was hard to dominate people when you didn't know what they were talking about. (3.76)
If you need a lesson in how to behave, just look at what Robert does at the beginning of this book—and then do the opposite. If you just read this sentence, where would you think Robert is? Engaged in a political conspiracy? Working through the criminal underworld? No, he's at dinner with his family—and he's still thinking about dominating and crushing other people.
Quote #2
"My guess is I'm way, way down. That's how it is with most affiliances. But I can pay real money for each answer I pipe upwards." The creature named a number; it was enough to ride the freefall every day for a year. A payoff certificate floated in the air between them, showing the named amount and a bonus schedule. (4.66)
One form of community/business that is at the heart of Rainbows End is affiliance, which is a word our spellchecker hates. Affiliance is more like a contract than a friendship, but it's a type of social relation that, here, gets certain people talking to each other. Note that this is the only time that Juan thinks about what he can afford with this affiliance's pay. The rest of the time, the money issue fades into the background.
Quote #3
"Mom died two years ago—and dumped you decades before that. But maybe you should wonder about other things. For instance, where are all your old pals from Stanford?" (8.25)
Bob is a little mean here, but maybe you have to be mean to get through to Robert. Here, Bob reminds Robert that he has no community to fall back on: he never had any real good friends, he drove away his wife, and now, with the Ezra Pound Incident, he's driven away the one person who really wanted to help him—Miri.
Quote #4
So Miri hung out with farther-away friends. Jin's parents were shrinks in the Provincial Medical Care Group in Hainan. Jin didn't speak very good English, but then Miri's Mandarin was worse. Actually, language wasn't a problem. They'd get together on his beach or hers—depending on which side of the world was daylight or had the nicest weather—and chatter away in Goodenuf English, the air around them filled with translation guesstimates and picture substitutions. (10.4)
First, let's note that the end of this quote really connects community to "Communication" and to "Technology": Miri is able to be friends with a kid in China because their computers are able to help translate for them. But we're putting this here as a reminder that, in the future, distance is not a barrier to community or friendship. You can meet to chat with friends all over the world.
Quote #5
"The glue?" Tommie looked faintly embarrassed. "It doesn't exist yet. But it's almost been invented." Tommie had broached the concept on an ornamental gardening forum, crossed that with some VCs. The Ornamental Shrub Society of Japan was even now working with some Argentine biologists to create the final form of the aerosol. (15.106)
Just as Miri can be friends with people around the world, so Tommie can use the internet to get answers from a distributed network of people. The Ornamental Shrub Society and the Argentine biologists might not come up with the aerosol glue on their own, but if you get these two communities to start talking to each other—forming some sort of super-community—then things can really happen.
Quote #6
Finally he got a window that promised "public local reality only." Yeah. Only two hundred thousand of them for this part of San Diego County. He chose at random. Outside the car, the North County hillsides were swept clean of the subdivisions. The road had only three lanes and the cars were out of the 1960s. He noticed the tag on the windshield of his car (now a Ford Falcon): San Diego Historical Society. (15.202)
Okay, so maybe only sometimes the Tokyo-based Ornamental Shrub Society and the Argentine biologists can work together. More often, it seems like we get the situation Robert sees here: there are lots of niche communities, like the Pratchett fans or the San Diego Historical Society. But these separate communities aren't interacting with each other and Robert has to choose between them. And it's hard to choose between 200,000 separate communities.
Quote #7
One of the youngest marines laughed. "You're just getting old, Nancy. Cross-belief strife is tragic new."
Bob didn't try to parse the slang, but he'd heard enough from Dad and Miri to get the point. (20.143-4)
Thankfully, however weird the future gets, we can be assured of one thing: young people use slang. "Tragic" is about the only slang that we see in this book. But this marine's use of slang marks him as part of a young community.
Quote #8
"I thought the whole point of belief circles was that they can coexist in the same space."
[…]
"But," Rivera continued, "the library is a tight fit. In principle we can morph to support the multiple beliefs, like on Pyramid Hill. In fact, our environment is often too close for conflicting haptics." (21.23)
Here's the flipside to those 200,000 views that Robert was choosing between: there, you had many communities and no interaction. But, as librarian Rivera explains, in the library, they couldn't fit too many views in because people would be interacting with each other. So since these different communities (the belief circles) couldn't ignore each other, now they're going to war for the library.
Quote #9
The affair had called into existence (or simply into his notice?) a creature that might be his equal. Rabbit had played both sides through the first part of the riot... but now Dangerous Knowledge had been taken over by something very creative, something who was having as much fun tonight as Rabbit himself. So he had millions of new affiliates, some of them as capable as a human could ever be. And he'd found a special new friend, to boot. (25.28)
Just as Robert has to deal with being completely alone and without community, so Rabbit has to deal with being one-of-a-kind. Now, with his affiliances, Rabbit has lots of connections with people, but no one that's his equal/friend. Until now, when Dangerous Knowledge is being driven by someone who seems like "a special new friend." This is a happy moment for Rabbit and a reminder that up till now, he had no community of equals. (This quote is Evidence with a capital "E" that Rabbit isn't human given the way he thinks about humans and himself.)
Quote #10
"The Scoochis have always been eclectic. Now that they have a librareome, they're building game consensus down to fine-grained topic levels, often down to individual paragraphs. It's much more subtle than the Hacek stuff, though children pick up on it very quickly. Their real power is that Scoochis can blend realities. That's what's happened with them and the Hacekeans. The Scoochis come from all over, even from the failed states. Now they're feeding the digitizations back outwards. Wherever it fits, the Hacek people are running things. Other places, other visions—but all with access to the entire body of the library." (Epilogue.41)
Here's the awesome result of the library riot: both belief circles—the Scoochis and the Hacekians—are now working together. We'll be honest, this paragraph kind of confuses us: on one hand, Rivera says, "they're building game consensus," which makes it sound like everyone is agreeing on what they're seeing. But then he adds "Other places, other visions" which, well, doesn't sound like consensus. Like we said, we're not entirely sure how this is working, but we can say that the Scoochis and the Hacekians seem to have formed one big community here.