How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Miri squinted at the broken spine. "'E,' Y—oh, 'Ezra Pound'? Well... yes, I've got all her stuff. Let me show you, Robert!" She hesitated, then saw the foolscap lying atop a box. She picked it up and it came to life. Titles streamed down the page, the cantos, the essays—even, God help us, later criticism from the mindless depths of the twenty-first century. "But seeing it on this page is like looking through a keyhole, Robert. I can show you how to see it all around you, with—" (7.27)
Okay, we confess: we pulled this quote because we're amused that Miri thinks Ezra Pound is a she. But we also pulled it because it contains one of Miri's ideas about communication and technology: trying to read poetry on a view-page is like seeing the world through a keyhole—so you can imagine how little respect she has for books. (It would be like looking through a… pinhole, maybe?) For Miri, this sort of info is everywhere out there, while Robert thinks of books as a main form of communication technology.
Quote #2
If anyone could arrange a matchup with Xiu Xiang, it was her. She opened her mouth to remark on this—and noticed the warning glare in Lena's eyes, as clear as any silent messaging could ever be. (13.93)
Although there's lots of cool tech for communicating (like all that silent messaging), some old forms are still pretty good. In fact, this is an idea we hear at least twice: here with Lena and later with Winston Blount, where his "glare was as good as any high-tech messaging" (26.24). So far all the high-tech stuff, some of the old-fashioned ways to communicate still come in handy… at least for old people.
Quote #3
He looked downstairs again. Strange. He couldn't see into the living room anymore. Normally that was on the house menu, but now it was as private as the bedrooms. He stood and walked over to the door, quietly eased it open half an inch, snooping the good old-fashioned way. (16.64)
Again, for all the cool tech in the book, sometimes the old ways are best… particularly when the cool tech doesn't work for some reason. Here, Robert would normally snoop, but Bob and Alice have put up some sort of privacy restriction on part of the house. But they can't stop him from sneaking out of his door and snooping the "old-fashioned way." Maybe they are vulnerable to that sort of snooping because they're mostly used to dealing with high-tech snooping? So, bonus points to Robert for making his old age and old habits work. (And let's add the fact that Alice and Bob make the living room private communicates that they're talking about something important enough to be snooped on.)