uninvention

It would be the Amen of his life to have praised God, not upon a harp, but upon a ship that should carry her own power, that should store wind or its equivalent as she stored her victuals, that should be something wrested from the chaos of uninvention and ordered and disciplined and subordinated to Abel Keeling's will ....

Widdershins Oliver [pseud.] Onions 1917

Someone once told me of putting an out-of-office automated reply on his email before going on holidays but sending an email just before he did so, which prompted an automated out-of-office reply at the other end, which then generated an out-of-office reply at his end, and so on, in a cycle terminable only in death or the uninvention of the computer, whichever comes soonest, a bit like the story Evelyn Waugh used to tell about his father's thank you cards for birthday cards which generated thank you cards for the thank you cards which then etc.

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