get up and go out and do something

"I have been called a Luddite.

      I welcome it.

     Do you know what a Luddite is? A person who hates newfangled contraptions. Ned Ludd was a textile worker in England at around the start of the nineteenth century who busted up a lot of new contraptions--mechanical looms that were going to put him out of work, that were going to make it impossible for him with his particular skills to feed, clothe, and shelter his family. In 1813 the British government executed by hanging seventeen men for 'machine breaking,' as it was called, a capital crime.

     Today we have contraptions like nuclear submarines armed with Poseidon missiles that have H-bombs in their warheads. And we have contraptions like computers that cheat you out of becoming. Bill Gates says, 'Wait till you can see what your computer can become.' But it's you who should do the becoming, not the damn fool computer. What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do...

     Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

-- Kurt Vonnegut