“Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube.”

—  Vannevar Bush, book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)
Context: Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to the methods and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done here. Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube.

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 "Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may c…" by Vannevar Bush?
Vannevar Bush photo
Vannevar Bush57
American electrical engineer and science administrator 1890–1974

Related quotes

John Flanagan photo

“But then, in his lifetime, Halt had often ignored what was technically legal. Technicalities didn't appeal to him. All too often, they simply got in the way of doing the right thing.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Lost Stories

Franz Kafka photo

“Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. That is not the sort of belief that indicates real faith.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

48
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Karel Čapek photo

“Any acceleration constitutes progress, Miss Glory. Nature had no understanding of the modern rate of work. From a technical standpoint the whole of childhood is pure nonsense. Simply wasted time. An untenable waste of time.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher photo

“A great deal of difficulty has been caused in the administration of the law, and particularly of the common law, by decisions in which technical rules have been formulated which were not true—that is, were not in accordance with the facts of the case.”

William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher (1815–1899) British lawyer, judge and politician

In re North, Ex parte Hasluck (1895), L. R. 2 Q. B. D. [1895], p. 269.

Pope Benedict XVI photo

“If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI to the Bishops Priests and Deacons Men and Women Religious and All the Lay Faithful On Christian Hope, 30 November 2007
2007

Michael Moorcock photo

“Any forthcoming dispute was likely to be a battle between ignorance of one sort and ignorance of another.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The Winds of Limbo aka The Fireclown (1965), Chapter 4 (p. 151)

Pope Benedict XVI photo

“The ambiguity of progress becomes evident. Without doubt, it offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil — possibilities that formerly did not exist. We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth (cf. Eph 3:16; 2 Cor 4:16), then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

In Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html (30 November 2007) <br class="br">2007

Albrecht Dürer photo

“Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. Now the sole reason why painters of this sort are not aware of their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or become an absolute artist; but the blame for this should be laid upon their masters, who are themselves ignorant of this art.”

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) German painter, printmaker, mathematician, and theorist

The Art of Measurement (1525).

“Organisations are technical instruments; designed as means to definite goals… they are expendable. Institutions… may be partly engineered, but they have also a “natural” dimension. They are the products of interaction and adaptation; they become the receptacles of group idealism; they are less readily expendable.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Philip Selznick, quoted in Charles Perrow (1960, p.4), as cited in: Owen A. Jones. The Sources of Goal Incongruence in a Public Service Network. 2013. p. 35-36

“Why should old interpretations of scripture, all of which reflect the ignorance and prejudice and limitations of the age in which they were formulated, bar the way to progress in our modern day?”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Sermon (1899)

Related topics