“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)
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
“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)
“The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.”
Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography
Source: Inventing the Future (1963), p. 161
Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator
On financial planning at a speech at the Smithsonian.
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.
“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/ <br class="br">Similar remarks are attributed to Peter Drucker and Dandridge M. Cole. <br class="br">Cf. Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future (1963): "The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented." <br class="br">Nigel Calder reviewed Gabor's book and wrote, "we cannot predict the future, but we can invent it..." <br class="br">1970s
“Steve Jobs: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs
Source: Steve Jobs
Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 11, The 'Super', p. 222