“Never before have people been so infantalized, made so dependent on the machine for everything; as the earth rapidly approaches its extinction due to technology, our souls are shrunk and flattened by its pervasive rule. Any sense of wholeness and freedom can only return by the undoing of the massive division of labour at the heart of technological progress. This is the liberatory project in all its depth.”

— John Zerzan , book Future Primitive and Other Essays

Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author 1943

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 13, “The Future of Science: Surprises or Revolutions” (p. 210)

“Our society depends entirely on its technology. Change the technology, and you change the society. Most especially you change the ethics.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: A Gift From Earth (1968), Chapter 10, "Parlette's Hand" (p. 174)

“This premise -- that technology only came to promote progress -- puts us in great danger since there is no questioning of its functionality, problem-solving, advantages and disadvantages. Without consciousness of the use of digital technologies, we end up being cast in a way that is imposed on us. Having a critical approach is necessary to shape the technologies to respect our culture, customs and needs.”

David Nemer

(p. 48)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

“War is obsolete. It could never have been done before. Only ten years ago… technology reached the point where it could be done. Since then the invisible technological-capability revolution has made it ever easier so to do.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

“Power in Russia today is the power that's established, mounted. It arises anew and it's authoritarian in its technology, but not in its program. It doesn't know which one it wants to be and can be — this depends on its future programming by people, i. e. you.”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

"Сегодня власть в России — власть устанавливаемая, учредительная власть. Она возникает заново и авторитарна по технологии, но не по своей программе. Она еще не знает, какой хочет и может быть, — это зависит от будущего ее программирования людьми, то есть вами."

“Computer science is a restless infant and its progress depends as much on shifts in point of view as on the orderly development of our current concepts.”

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

“The potential of any new technology is always dissipated by its users involvement in its predecessors.”

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

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 210

“Russia has made its choice in favor of democracy. Fourteen years ago, independently, without any pressure from outside, it made that decision in the interests of itself and interests of its people — of its citizens. This is our final choice, and we have no way back. There can be no return to what we used to have before. And the guarantee for this is the choice of the Russian people, themselves. No, guarantees from outside cannot be provided. This is impossible. It would be impossible for Russia today. Any kind of turn towards totalitarianism for Russia would be impossible, due to the condition of the Russian society.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Joint press conference with President George Bush in 2005, Slovakia http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050224-9.html
2000 - 2005

“The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter III, p. 377.

“The division of labour is a consequence of the previous accumulation of capital… As the accumulation of capital must have preceded the division of labour, so its subsequent division can only be extended as capital is more and more accumulated. Accumulation and division act and react on each other. The quantity of raw materials which the same number of people can work up increases in a great proportion, as labour comes to be more and more subdivided; and acccording as the operations of each workman are reduced to a greater degree of identity and simplicity, he has, as already explained, a greater chance of discovering machines and processes for facilitating and abridging his labour. The quantity of industry, therefore, not only increases in every country with the increase of the stock or capital which sets it in motion; but, in consequence of this increase, the division of labour becomes extended, new and more powerful implements and machines are invented, and the same quantity of labour is thus made to produce an infinitely greater quantity of commodities”

John Ramsay McCulloch (1789–1864) Scottish economist, author and editor

Source: The principles of political economy, 1825, p. 95-96

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