“Agriculture is the oldest and most vicious of humanity’s bio-technologies.”

— Bruce Sterling , book Islands in the Net

Source: Islands in the Net (1988), Chapter 11 (p. 389)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 25, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Agriculture is the oldest and most vicious of humanity’s bio-technologies." by Bruce Sterling?

Bruce Sterling 13

American writer, speaker, futurist, and design instructor 1954

Related quotes

“Developing countries can leapfrog several stages in the development process through the application of bio-technology in agriculture”

M. S. Swaminathan (1925) Indian scientist

From [Prasad, Jagdish, Prasad, Arbind, Development Planning for Agriculture: Policies, Economic Implications, Inputs, Production and Marketing, http://books.google.com/books?id=d_eGATn4SHIC&pg=PA93, 1994, Mittal Publications, 978-81-7099-569-2, 93–]

“Musical instruments are among the oldest human-made artifacts we have found. …Music predates agriculture in the history of our species.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Smedley D. Butler book War Is a Racket

War is a racket (1935)
War is a racket (1935)
Source: War Is a Racket

“Human nature as we know it is, nevertheless, malleable and manageable. It may be radically modified as a result of advances in bio-, molecular, nano- and computational technologies. It will therefore be essential to establish a clear code of ethics regulating the use of these technologies sooner rather than later.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.17

“The most human thing about us is our technology.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Man and the future of organizations, Volume 5, School of Business Administration, Georgia State University, 1974, p. 19
1970s

“The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.”

Richard Wagner book Opera and Drama

Opera and Drama (1851)

“When people look most vicious, what you are seeing is not their animal side. It is the savagery that only humans can muster.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Fate

Source: Fool's Fate

“The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.”

Freeman Dyson book Infinite in All Directions

Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 8 : Quick Is Beautiful, p. 135
Context: The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.

“By using TV as a bra… the most intimate belonging of a human being, we will demonstrate the human use of technology, and also stimulate viewers… to look for the new, imaginative and humanistic ways of using our technology.”

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) American video art pioneer

Statement on TV Bra for a Living Scultpure (1969), cited in: C. A. Xuan Mai Ardia, "[http://artradarjournal.com/2014/10/24/nam-june-paik-becoming-robot-new-york/ Nam June Paik: “Becoming Robot” in New York – in pictures," at Art Radar journal, posted on 24/10/2014
1960s

“Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions — beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement — near tomato fields in San Diego County, tomato fields which use the most modern farm technology.
Vicious rats gnaw on them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices. And they carry in water from irrigation pumps.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

What the Future Holds (1984)

“Agriculture is the oldest and most vicious of humanity’s bio-technologies.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Bruce Sterling 13

Related quotes

Related topics