Quotes about technology
A collection of quotes on the topic of technology, use, news, world.
Quotes about technology

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

Designing the Future (2007)

On Wii
Source: November 16, 2006 Business Week interview http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2006/tc20061116_750580.htm

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Books, The Beggar, Volume IV: Die Before Dying (Hari-Nama Press, 2005)

Press statement (21 July 2003), quoted in "Jackson attacks music piracy bill" in BBC News (22 July 2003) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3085987.stm

The Historian's Craft, pg.36

Source: "Playing Iron Man was hard and I dug deep: Robert Downey Jr" https://www.hindustantimes.com/hollywood/playing-iron-man-was-hard-and-i-dug-deep-robert-downey-jr/story-OOv6pvyDb8ojxc1r78g89K.html (13 December 2020)

The Cosmic Game - Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (1997), ISBN 0-7914-3876-7, p. 260.

Opening, The Network is the Message, p. 1
The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001)

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2016), p. 211

In the Shadow of the Moon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Shadow_of_the_Moon

With the observable fact that scientific knowledge makes our lives better when applied with concern for human welfare and environmental protection, there is no question that science and technology can produce abundance so that no one has to go without... Hopes for divine intervention by mythical characters are delusions that cannot solve the problems of our modern world. The future of the world is our responsibility and it depends upon decisions we make today. We are our own salvation or damnation.
Source: Designing the Future (2007), p. 10

“Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.”

“Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.”
Source: Homo Faber (1957)

“Technology and comfort - having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.”
Source: Doctor Faustus

Guest lecture, UC Berkeley http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7582902000166025817 Oct. 5, 2005 – 40 min.

ZDNet: "AI shouldn't be held back by scaremongering: Michael Dell" https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-shouldnt-be-held-back-by-scaremongering-michael-dell/ (02 May 2018)

Source: "The Place of Science in Modern Civilization", 1906, p. 355
From Ctheory Interview With Paul Virilio 'The Kosovo War Took Place In Orbital Space: Paul Virilio in Conversation with John Armitage' http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=132
“Successful innovators have CEOs who act as technology evangelists.”
Source: Game-Changing Strategies, 2013, p. 68

1970s
Source: Douglas C. McGill, ART PEOPLE http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/03/arts/art-people.html, New York Times, October 3, 1986

“I make technology ridiculous.”
Leigh Landy, Antje von Graevenitz. " 'I MAKE TECHNOLOGY RIDICULOUS' — THE UNUSUAL DIALECTICS OF NAM JUNE PAIK," in: Leigh Landy (ed.) 1992. Technik, p. 79
1970s

Statement on TV Bra for a Living Scultpure (1969), cited in: C. A. Xuan Mai Ardia, "[http://artradarjournal.com/2014/10/24/nam-june-paik-becoming-robot-new-york/ Nam June Paik: “Becoming Robot” in New York – in pictures," at Art Radar journal, posted on 24/10/2014
1960s

Vol. I, Ch. 13: "Machinery and Big Industry".
(Buch I) (1867)

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)
Source: "The principles of organization", 1937, p. 90

2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)

2000s, White House speech (2006)

Said to be a quote from Das Kapital in an anonymous email, this attribution has been debunked at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/consumerdebt.asp with the earliest occurrence found being a post by Gpkkid on 23 December 2008 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/do-bailouts-encourage-ponzi-schemes/#comment-24005; it was used as a basis of a satirical article "Americans to Undergo Preschool Reeducation in Advance of Country’s Conversion to Communism" at NewsMutiny http://www.newsmutiny.com/pages/Communist_Reeducation.html, but the author of article on the satiric website says that he is not author of the quote http://www.clockbackward.com/2009/02/04/did-karl-marx-predict-financial-collapse/
Misattributed

Source: Income Distribution (1975), p. 61; Cited in: Acemoglu (2000, p. 31)

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.38

2013, Commencement Address at Ohio State University (May 2013)

Cited in Soviet Youth and Socialism http://leninist.biz/en/1974/SYAS228/3.1-Youth.and.Culture
Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 7, Automation and Such, p. 177.

Source: The rise of the western world, 1973, p. 240-1, as cited in: Thrainn Eggertsson (1990), Economic behavior and institutions. p. 255-6

Reforms Slow to Arrive at Drilling Agency http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/us/politics/31drill.html (April 2, 2010)
2010, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill (April 2010)

Source: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html 2013 Christmas Message
26 December 2013

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Address on the Strategic Defense Initiative (1983)

Source: Joseph Nechvatal. in: " Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper http://www.mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Popper.pdf," in: Media Art History, 2004.

Source: Income Distribution (1975), p. 35; Cited in: Acemoglu (2000, p. 16)

Vol. I, Ch. 15 (last sentence), pg. 556.
(Buch I) (1867)

At a press conference for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as the Doomsday Clock is moved forward by two minutes to five minutes to midnight, as quoted in "Nukes, climate push 'Doomsday Clock' forward" MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16670686/ (1 January 2007)

Joe Hisaishi, who wrote music for Hayao Miyazaki's films https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1780283/studio-ghibli-composer-joe-hisaishi-talks-about-how,South China Morning Post

“A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.”
Attributed to Andy Grove in: Ciarán Parker (2006) The Thinkers 50: The World's Most Influential Business. p. 70
New millennium

Speech to the US Congress (13 October 1949)

Robert J. Barro, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Economic growth 2nd ed. (2004), Ch. 7 : Technological Change: Schumpeterian Models of Quality Ladders

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.17

From Hawking's article A Brief History of Relativity http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993018-6,00.html, in Time magazine (31 December 1999)

§ 133
2010s, 2015, Laudato si' : Care for Our Common Home

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Interview in Shanghai, as quoted in [http://learning.sohu.com/20091118/n268291186.shtml China Daily (17 November 2009)
2009, Town Hall meeting in Shanghai (November 2009)

"Science AMA Series: Stephen Hawking AMA Answers!", reddit.com (8 October 2015) https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv/; also quoted in "Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots" Huffington Post (8 October 2015) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-hawking-capitalism-robots_us_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15

2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)

Forbes: "Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella On The Extraordinary Potential Of AI" https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/06/04/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-on-the-extraordinary-potential-of-ai/ (4 June 2018)

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Interview with Putra Nababan in the White House https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38sFgxBhpkU (March 2010)
2010

Letter to M. K.
The Road to Revolution (2008)

2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)

Lewis M. Branscomb, Young-Hwan Choi (1996) Korea at the turning point: innovation-based strategies for development

“War is the ultimate realization of modern technology.”
Source: End Zone (1972), Ch. 16

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 32
Context: The constructive schizoid person stands against the spiritual emptiness of encroaching technology and does not let himself be emptied by it. He lives and works with the machine without becoming a machine. He finds it necessary to remain detached enough to get meaning from the experience, but in doing so, to protect his own inner life from impoverishment.

1984
Context: On technology: "That’s probably why I don’t rush out to buy all the latest technology. In fact, I find it quite boring at the moment, simply because so much of it is just technology — nothing more. I buy something if it really appeals to me, if I think it will add another dimension to what I have at the moment. Don’t misunderstand me: I think it is important to have as many different instruments as possible, with different libraries of sounds, and different characteristics. But some people adopt the attitude that if they had enough money they could have all the machinery they wanted, and that would somehow make their music better. That’s simply not the case... This is another reason why it’s important not to become obsessed with technology. You’ve got to remember that however a sound is generated — acoustically, electronically digitally - it’s still just a sound, a part of nature".

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

p 110
The Undiscovered Self (1958)
Context: We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i. e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)
Context: It’s true that government cannot prevent all the downsides of the technological change and global competition that are out there right now, and some of those forces are also some of the things that are helping us grow. And it’s also true that some programs in the past, like welfare before it was reformed, were sometimes poorly designed, created disincentives to work. But we’ve also seen how government action time and again can make an enormous difference in increasing opportunity and bolstering ladders into the middle class. Investments in education, laws establishing collective bargaining, and a minimum wage -- these all contributed to rising standards of living for massive numbers of Americans.

Translation of his defense testimony at his 1999 trial http://web.archive.org/20020203190623/www.geocities.com/kurdifi/ocelan.html.
Context: Every ideology and mode of belief can, if true, implement itself by using the resources of technology and above all those of the media without having to resort to violence. In other words, violence has become unnecessary. In fact things have got to the point where violence cannot be afforded. The rich variety of institutions and practices the democratic system offers is built on this social and scientific-technological development, and whatever problem it tackles, it offers a certain solution. It itself is the solution.
To go through the examples, the solution to religious wars is secularism. Here the standard and the implementation involve taking the approach that everyone is free to follow their religious beliefs and democratic criteria will apply to all of them. Democracy offers definite freedom of belief and this is the antidote to religious wars.
Again the same applies to the fields of thought and ideology. There is freedom of thought and conviction. It is allowed to work as one wants and implement one's beliefs as long as one does not infringe the rights of others in this respect. This also applies to political ideas and their expression in the form of parties. As long as it adheres to the democratic system and its state structure, every party can offer a solution without resorting to violence. There is no question here of either imposing a religion by force or breaking and shattering the structure of the state. Religion, thought and the parties based on them know to meet the standards of the democratic system of the state because they are based on them. If they don't know how to do this, then democracy gets the right to defend itself.
It is clear here that regardless of the social group they are based on (which might be a nation or an ethnic or religious group), beliefs, ideas and the parties through which they are expressed cannot, in the name of these beliefs and ideas, force the limits on which the state is based. There is no need for this, because it will render the problem they claim to be solving even worse. Consequently, there is no need for it, and, in any case, there are solutions within the system. These are the democratic rights of those groups. They are their freedoms of belief and thought. They are the parties. They are all types of coalitions. In the area of language and culture, the democratic solution is even more striking. This is the area where the greatest successes have been achieved. Because the intermingling of language and culture, these values that many national groups have assimilated together for centuries, do not want to separate and get weak and monotonous, but prefer to stay together to get enriched and achieve variety, strength and life. And the school and laboratory for this is democracy and its implementation with conviction.
Democracy is almost a garden of language and culture. The most developed and powerful principles of our day once again express this clearly. All European countries and North America are clear proofs of it. The attempt to suppress new religious, linguistic, cultural, intellectual and political developments during past centuries was the cause of all major wars, and resistance against suppression gave to wars which could be seen as understandable. Particularly in European countries this experience led to the development of a determined democracy in the wake of all these wars and led to the supremacy of the West. Western civilisation can, in this sense, be termed democratic civilisation. The democratic system is at least as important as scientific and technological superiority. Feeding off each other, they both became strong and achieved the status of world civilisation.

“Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us.”
Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan at Hiroshima Peace Memorial at Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, Japan (May 27, 2016) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/27/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-abe-japan-hiroshima-peace
2016
Context: There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war -- memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism; graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity. Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction; how the very spark that marks us as a species -- our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will -- those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction. [... ] Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds; to cure disease and understand the cosmos. But those same discoveries can be turned into ever-more efficient killing machines. The wars of the modern age teach this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution, as well.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: Henry David Thoreau told us: "All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end." …Goethe told us: "One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words." …Socrates told us: "The unexamined life is not worth living." …the prophet Micah told us: "What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?" And I can tell you... what Confucius, Isaiah, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Spinoza and Shakespeare told us... There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.
2000
page ?
Polygamy: Nature's Command

Source: Designing the Future (2007), p. 35

House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Hearing on Coronavirus (March 5, 2020)

“We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.”
Source: debate at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, Mass., 9 September 2009