Life & Wisdom Quote by Carrie P. Snow

Technology is framed here less as a tool than as a two-faced character: charming, generous, and quietly dangerous. Snow’s “queer thing” isn’t a throwaway adjective; it marks technology as uncanny, not fully knowable, always a little out of joint with ordinary moral categories. The line lands because it refuses the comfort of neutrality. We want gadgets to be obedient instruments. Snow insists they behave more like relationships: transactional, intoxicating, and capable of betrayal.

The “great gifts” are obvious enough - speed, convenience, reach - but the real bite is in how casually the harm arrives. A stab in the back isn’t a fair fight; it’s damage you don’t see coming, often delivered by something you trusted, often while you’re looking the other way. That’s the subtext: the costs of technology are rarely paid upfront. They show up later as dependency, surveillance, deskilling, loneliness, and the slow reorganization of daily life around systems designed for efficiency, not human flourishing.

Snow’s phrasing also suggests asymmetry. One hand offers; the other takes. The gift is marketed and celebrated. The wound is externalized, explained away as user error, “progress,” or an unfortunate side effect. As a writer, Snow is capturing the emotional truth of living inside innovation: gratitude braided with suspicion. The quote works because it reads like a warning without pretending you can opt out. You can refuse the gift, but you’ll still live in a world shaped by it - and that’s where the knife really is.