“Legibility is a denial of complexity, and it was also a prerequisite for the type of mechanical thinking that gave rise to the world of debt as we know it. If technology marks the gradual advancement of civilization, then illegibility is the monster we always end up on a quest to slay under different guises. It comes from a very deep place in our psyche; it is nothing less than a projection of our own desire to make sense of the world around us in order to reduce uncertainty. It is perhaps the same place where the urge to accumulate power comes from, and what drove the Swiss social historian Jacob Burkhardt to say “The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity”. One must understand this without necessarily attaching a value to it. Scientific progress owes a great deal to our tendency as a society to move toward legibility. A calculative-rational mode of thought depends on being able to measure things discreetly and objectively. Scientific inquiry is the exploration of the entirety of reality to the extent that it can be understood with our human brains. The tools we make with that newfound knowledge, though, are a product of their time. Just as with discovery, there is an air of inevitability with certain key developments.”