Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. –Melvin Kranzberg
I long for time. Technology doesn’t give time. It takes time away. So, technologically, I’m not a Luddite, but from a lifestyle standpoint I would like to turn the clock back—to a past that never existed, of course. –Andy Grove
(when Samuel Morse invented the telegraph)
Bill Gates says that in technology, things that are supposed to happen in less than five years usually take longer than expected, while things that are supposed to happen in more than 10 years usually come sooner than expected. –Michael Kinsley
(on the cost of technology) I have a rule: I don’t want to be flabbergasted more than three times by the same thing. –Dr. Albert Carnesale
(cargo cults) In the eighteenth century, Europeans first appeared in [the South Pacific], bringing all sorts of wondrous cargo with them in awesome great sailing ships—telescopes, cannons, felt hats, pocketknives, metal cookpots, you name it—and astounding the natives. When the Europeans sailed away, as they periodically did for long periods of time, the islanders would build effigies of the ships out of whatever plant materials they had at hand in an attempt to lure back the great ships and all the fabulous stuff they had brought with them. This behavior was seen again after World War II. The Pacific campaign had drawn huge numbers of men and materials to the
Life was simple before WWII, after that we had systems. –Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
The Eagle eventually shipped, and when it did, the people who toiled in the basement of Data General looked up and realized they needed something to fill in the void. An engineer’s essential desire, after all, is to design and build a machine and see it through to completion, but completion itself is therefore not the ultimate reward. In the Eagle days, West called this paradox “pinball.” In pinball, he reasoned, the prize for winning is getting to play again.
Venture capitalists make lemmings look like rugged individualists. –Mr. Radcliffe
Arthur C. Clarke once said that we underestimate the effect of technology in the long term, but overestimate it in the short term.
Rockets are systems that almost don’t work.
If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. –Freeman Dyson
Look, the world is a rather dumb place. There’s nothing special about it. It’s accidental. The world was terrible before people came along and changed it. So we don’t have much to lose by technology. The future of technology is about shifting to what people like to do, and that’s entertainment. Eventually, robots will make everything. The trend is over time. When Henry Ford was around, a large percentage of the population was involved in manufacturing. Now it’s much smaller. I’m telling you: all the money and the energy in this country will eventually be devoted to doing things with your mind and your time. –Marvin Minsky
(why PARC didn’t benefit from the desktop interface) I call it the Silicon Paradox. The only companies that can afford to do research are those with a huge share of a multi-billion-dollar market—A.T.&T., I.B.M., Xerox, DuPont. But the paradox is that the very circumstances that let you do research keep you from taking advantage of it. Meaning that if you already have a big, profitable business it probably makes more sense to focus on feeding that bulldog instead of going into the new businesses your research points to.” --Mr. Liddle
[T]echnology serves merely as a starting point in long distance business relationships. To do the hard stuff—closing deals, putting out fires, brainstorming, securing financing, kicking butt—you have to materialize on the spot. So the Net actually has put more people in the air, a phenomenon that might be called Saffo’s Law: If you talk to someone electronically, it will inevitably lead to a face-to-face meeting. Saffo’s Corollary: If you hate flying, kill your computer. –Paul Saffo
(fighting piracy) When you build a better mousetrap, what you often get is better-educated mice. –David Leibowitz
Technology is impossible to predict, but stupidity is a known constant. –Scott Adams
We may say that we’re more technologically able that earlier societies. But one thing about climate change is it’s potentially geopolitically destabilizing. And we’re not only more technologically able; we’re more technologically able destructively as well. I think it’s impossible to predict what will happen. I guess—thought I won’t be around to see it—I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that by 2100 most things were destroyed. –David Rind (2005)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. –Arthur C. Clarke
Mark Twain once sent a dozen friends a telegram saying, “FLEE AT ONCE—
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible. –Frank Moore Colby
They were talking about this tiny instrument that tells you exactly where you are anywhere on earth, longitude and latitude, within a couple of meters. It’s called a Global Positioning System. Apparently, there are these satellites in the sky that figure out all the math and then tell you where you are. I don’t know how this would help a person, exactly: I already know where I am, and I’m not in
