In an interview on Information

The Book of Disquiet.

This is a book of ideas. It’s not a book about the internet. It was written much earlier, in the 20th century, and written in Portuguese. It’s really a book of meditations. It’s very philosophical. It applies to the internet in that the main point is how much joy you can take in small things and small changes and the true drama of life can be extraordinarily minute in scale, and this, I think, gets at the idea that the internet and the stories we follow are, to a lot of us, extremely important and exciting and meaningful, though really they are just a few changes of characters on a little screen somewhere.

Is it a philosophical tract?

It is a philosophical tract. A collection of aphorisms, observations. It’s very rewarding to read and I’ve found that most people have not read this book, but everyone who has tried it, around 20 people that I know, have loved it.

And his point is that beauty is in small things?

Absolutely. Something that might seem a small change to a lot of observers is a big change to the person watching it and that we should think about our lives in those terms and not look for the big dramatic exciting moment, that interest and excitement can be found in other ways.