“The twentieth century was like twenty years' worth of change at today's rate of change.”

—  Ray Kurzweil

"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

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 "The twentieth century was like twenty years' worth of change at today's rate of change." by Ray Kurzweil?
Ray Kurzweil photo
Ray Kurzweil 40
Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist 1948

Related quotes

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Beyond our normal twenty-year outlook period, we recently attempted a forecast of the CO2 [carbon dioxide] build-up. We assumed different growth rates at different times, but with an average growth rate in fossil fuel use of about one percent per year starting today, our estimate is that the doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels might occur sometime late in the 21st century. That includes the impact of a synfuels industry. Assuming the greenhouse effect occurs, rising CO2 concentrations may begin to induce climactic changes around the middle of the 21st century.”

Edward E. David Jr. (1925–2017) American engineer

Keynote address at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory on the Palisades, New York campus of Columbia University (October 26, 1982) ( Inventing the Future: Energy and the CO2 "Greenhouse Effect", October 26, 1982, December 22, 2018, Exxon, w:Edward E. David Jr., Edward E., David Jr. http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/inventing-future-energy-co2-greenhouse-effect/,)

Joseph Nye photo

“The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a strange cocktail of continuity and change. Some aspects of international politics have not changed since Thucydides.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 2.
Context: The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a strange cocktail of continuity and change. Some aspects of international politics have not changed since Thucydides. There is a certain logic of hostility, a dilemma about security that goes with interstate politics. Alliances, balance of power, and choices in in policy between war and compromise have remained similar over the millennia.

Jack Welch photo

“When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Variant: If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

Robert D. Kaplan photo

“Europe is a landscape; East Asia a seascape. Therein lies a crucial difference between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

Robert D. Kaplan (1952) American writer

Robert D. Kaplan (2014), Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific. p. 21

“America's business problem is that it is entering the twenty-first century with companies designed during the nineteenth century to work well in the twentieth. We need something entirely different”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 30; cited in: Huey B. Long (1995), New Dimensions in Self-Directed Learning, p. 323

Marguerite Duras photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“One year of life is worth more than twenty years of hibernation.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 73

Ben Folds photo

“Good morning, son
In twenty years from now
Maybe we'll both sit down and have a few beers
And I can tell you 'bout today
And how I picked you up and everything changed.”

Ben Folds (1966) American musician

"Still Fighting It", Rockin' the Suburbs (2001).
Song lyrics, Solo

Related topics