Palo Alto, California, is home to many of America's large corporations, including Xerox and a few computer companies. When the band played there in March 1996, they were given a several tours of these temples of economical and technological advancement. Thus, the song is about the "city of the future" - the motto of Palo Alto, which is situated in Silicon Valley- and ponders the friendly attitude of the people the band members met there; Thom greets those people in the chorus. It was finally recorded in the UK in November 1997.

The band have never worked out how to play it live properly. This song was originally known as 'OK Computer' but was ditched pretty early on in the recording of that LP, to be revived and overhauled for release as a B-side.

To me, it's a very fitting b-side for the OK Computer album, because it stays in with the technology/humanity theme. Taken literally, the lyrics simply talk about a happy city with nice people. But read further into them, and you get Thom ranting about the mind-numbing day to day process of living, working and breathing in a city of the future. Of greeting people falsely. Of not really caring how a person is. Of throwing yourself into your work because there's nothing else. 'Everyone is 'happy' everyone is made for life'. As if the people aren't really living, they're just made to work, and they do it all day. Of people being too busy to see each other. At least, that's my interpretation of it.

There's some really cool imagery placed with this song on the video Meeting People Is Easy of people in a city. It was made into a video despite the fact that this is a b-side that isn't even on an album. However, the music stations didn't play it much, if at all.