“Unforeseen technological inventions can completely upset the most careful predictions.”

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Unforeseen technological inventions can completely upset the most careful predictions." by Richard Hamming?
Richard Hamming photo
Richard Hamming 90
American mathematician and information theorist 1915–1998

Related quotes

Ihara Saikaku photo

“There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.”

Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) Japanese writer

Book II, ch. 2.
The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

Dennis Gabor photo

“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man's ability to invent which has made human society what it is.”

Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography

Source: Inventing the Future (1963), p. 161

Philippe Kahn photo

“We focus on building innovation and inventing technology futures and we figure that it will take care of the rest. So far, it's done wonders.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

On financial planning at a speech at the Smithsonian.

“Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: The Benedictine monks who invented the mechanical clock in the 12th and 13th centuries believed that such a clock would provide a precise regularity to the seven periods of devotion... here is a great paradox: the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; and it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money. Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.... Gutenberg thought his invention would advance the cause of the Holy Roman See, whereas in fact, it turned out to bring a revolution which destroyed the monopoly of the Church.

Alan Kay photo

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

Alan Kay (1971) at a 1971 meeting of PARC http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/09/27/invent-the-future/
Similar remarks are attributed to Peter Drucker and Dandridge M. Cole.
Cf. Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future (1963): "The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented."
Nigel Calder reviewed Gabor's book and wrote, "we cannot predict the future, but we can invent it..."
1970s

Jared Diamond photo
Stanislaw Ulam photo

“Even the simplest calculation in the purest mathematics can have terrible consequences. Without the invention of the infinitesimal calculus most of our technology would have been impossible. Should we say therefore that calculus is bad?”

Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 11, The 'Super', p. 222

François Lelord photo

Related topics