Lanier finds many things fundamental to living in a society hard, like adhering to concepts relating to time, or receiving or sending mail; one ride in his amusement park brain is “a hamster wheel of pain,” as he mentally repeats to himself whatever menial tasks he needs to do until he does them. He is a voluminous talker prone to distraction; interrupt him mid-thought and prepare to find yourself hundreds of years forward or backward in time, talking about factories or Thomas Pynchon or the origins of the word meme. – GQ