Science & Tech Quote by Michael Nesmith

A rock on a shelf is a perfect Michael Nesmith image: humble, a little absurd, and quietly menacing. It turns “potential” into something physical and impatient. The rock’s value isn’t in what it is, but in what gravity is already negotiating with it. That’s the subtext Nesmith smuggles onto the Internet: a force sitting there, loaded, not because it’s benevolent or inspiring, but because it’s poised to move - and once it moves, you don’t get to call it back.

As a musician who lived through multiple media revolutions (broadcast TV fame with The Monkees, the long tail of music video, then digital distribution), Nesmith is speaking from the vantage point of someone who watched new platforms arrive first as novelty and later as infrastructure. The line “It’s not really doing it yet” captures an early-Internet mood: lots of hype, clunky tools, not much cultural consensus about what it was for. Then he pivots: “but it’s about to.” That’s not optimism; it’s inevitability.

The intent feels less like prophecy than warning dressed as metaphor. A falling rock doesn’t discriminate; it just obeys physics. Nesmith hints that the Internet’s defining trait won’t be content or community but acceleration - the rapid shift from possibility to impact. In that framing, the real question isn’t whether the Internet will change culture, but who’s standing under the shelf when it finally tips.