Quotes about technology

page 12

TIME interview (1977)

"The State of Humanity: Steadily Improving," Cato Institute Policy Report, September/October 1995 http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr-so-js.html

Source: His Master's Voice (1968), Ch. 11

Source: The Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai Wen-Ying, 1989, p. 67

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

1990s

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

James Martin (1978) The wired society. p. 3

Robert J. Gordon, Are Procyclical Productivity Fluctuations a Figment of Measurement Error? (1992).

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2016), p. 1

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 210

"A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women : The Reinvention of Nature (1991), pp.149-181.

Administration, A Foundation of Government (1940)

Thomas H. Davenport, "Need radical innovation and continuous improvement? Integrate process reengineering and TQM." Planning Review 21.3 (1993): 6-12.

Pg 27
The Way of Men (2012)

Robert J. Shiller (1984), Review of Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice by Robert E. Lucas, Thomas J. Sargent.

The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

Source: The Forge of God (1987), Chapter 52 (p. 352)

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

" Against Creative Capitalism https://web.archive.org/web/20080813084622/http://creativecapitalism.typepad.com:80/creative_capitalism/2008/06/against-creativ.html" (2008), published in Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders.

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 2, The Culture of the Internet, p. 36

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy

The Shape of The Book, p. 135.
A History of Reading (1996)

Polish Press Agency (July 17, 2018): Polish Scientist warns against cyborgization perils https://polandinenglish.info/38094623/polish-scientist-warns-against-cyborgization-perils.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

April 1, 2001, First Arab Conference on Arabizing the Internet, Amman, Jordan.

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter Three, Communication Today: What's New?, p. 94

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 1, Lessons from the History of the Internet, p. 10

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 67

"Strategy", item 180
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Source: The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress, 1992, p. 295; as cited by Pol, Eduardo, and Peter Carroll.

Thompson (1991) Fast Foreword, from The American Replacement of Nature.

"Control of Human Behavior", item 160
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

"JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty" interview by Jean-Paul Coillard in Disturb ezine (1998)
Context: For the sake of my children and grandchildren, I hope that the human talent for self-destruction can be successfully controlled, or at least channelled into productive forms, but I doubt it. I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game.

preface to 2015 edition of Secrets and Lies
Cryptography
Context: A few years ago I heard a quotation, and I am going to modify it here: If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.

Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
Context: The relationship between information and the mechanisms for its control is fairly simple to describe: Technology increases the available supply of information.... control mechanisms are strained... When additional control mechanisms are themselves technical, they in turn further increase the supply of information. When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown in psychic tranquillity and social purpose occurs. Without defenses, people have no way of finding meaning in their experiences, lose their capacity to remember, and have difficulty imagining reasonable futures.

Page 168.
"Anti-Copyright: Why Improvisation and Noise Run Against the Idea of Intellectual Property" (October 2008)

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 8, Fixed capital, p. 221

Disturbing the Universe (1979)
Context: If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives. <!-- Pt. 1, Ch. 1

With No Apologies (1979)
Context: My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.

Source: 1970s, Krishnamurti in India, 1970-71 (1971), p. 56
Context: So you must ask this question, put this question to yourself, whether your mind can be empty of all its past and yet retain the technological knowledge, your engineering knowledge, your linguistic knowledge, the memory of all that, and yet function from a mind that is completely empty. The emptying of that mind comes about naturally, sweetly without bidding, when you understand yourself, when you understand what you are. What you are is the memory, bundle of memories, experiences, thoughts. When you understand that, look at it, observe it; and when you observe it, see in that observation that there is no duality between the observer and the observed; then when you see that, you will see that your mind can be completely empty, attentive, and in that attention you can act wholly, without any fragmentation.

1990s, Schafer interview (1995)
Context: In case you haven't noticed, we live in a world that is for the first time in all of recorded human history unlikely to have a major war. There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. The reason is our technology was better than theirs. Probably what pushed the Russians over the edge was SDI. It was really a combination of SDI and CNN. They realized they couldn't beat us so they decided to change the ball game.

Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 15 "Nationalism — A Political Religion"
Context: The growth of technology at the expense of human personality, and especially the fatalistic submission with which the great majority surrender to this condition, is the reason why the desire for freedom is less alive among men today and has with many of them given place completely to a desire for economic security. This phenomenon need not appear so strange, for our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action. Constant tutelage of our acting and thinking has made us weak and irresponsible; hence, the continued cry for the strong man who is to put an end to our distress. This call for a dictator is not a sign of strength, but a proof of inner lack of assurance and of weakness, even though those who utter it earnestly try to give themselves the appearance of resolution. What man most lacks he most desires. When one feels himself weak he seeks salvation from another's strength; when one is cowardly or too timid to move one's own hands for the forging of one's fate, one entrusts it to another. How right was Seume when he said: "The nation which can only be saved by one man and wants to be saved that way deserves a whipping!"

90th Birthday Reflections (2007)
Context: Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other. This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technology tools help us to gather and disseminate information, but we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations.
I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I hope we've learnt something from the most barbaric century in history — the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation…

Source: Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect
Context: You see how increasingly the only way we in the advanced industrial nations, with our bewildering technology network, can survive, is by selling bewilderment and dependence on technology to the rest of the world. Or is it not bewilderment and dependence, but a healthier wealthier better way of living than the old way? And, yet, whether or not you dress up technology to look local, the technology network is the same. And as it spreads, will it spread the ability to use machines, as we do, without understanding them?

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 35: Cruel Calculus, Character: Sobol
Context: "Technology. It is the physical manifestation of the human will. It began with simple tools. Then came the wheel, and on it goes to this very day. Civilizations rise and fall based on technological innovation. Bronze falls to iron. Iron falls to steel. Steel falls to gunpowder. Gunpowder falls to circuitry." Sobol looked toward the camera again. "For those among you who don't understand what's happening, let me explain: the Great Diffusion has begun—an era when the nation state dissolves. Technology will cause this. As countries compete for markets in the global economy, diffusion of high technology will accelerate. It will result in a diffusion of power. And diffusion of power will make countries an ineffective organizing principle. At first, marginal governments will fail. Larger states will not be equipped to intercede effectively. These lawless regions will become breeding grounds for international crime and terrorism. Threats to centralized authority will multiply. Centralized power will be defenseless against these distributed threats. You have already experienced the leading edge of this wave."

Responsible Scientific Investigation and Application (1976)
Context: Without wanting to seem overly partisan, I would like simply to point out that the space program has by all standards become America's greatest generator of new ideas in science and technology. It is essentially an organization for opening new frontiers, physically and intellectually. Today we live in a different world because in 1958 Americans accepted the challenge of space and made the required national investment to meet it.
Young people today are learning a new science, but even more importantly, they are viewing the earth and man's relationship to it quite differently — and I think perhaps more humanly — than we did fifteen years ago. The space program is the first large scientific and technological activity in history that offers to bring the people of all nations together instead of setting them further apart.

1970s, You are the World (1972)
Context: Now, can one die every day to everything that one knows — except, of course, the technological knowledge, the direction where your home is, and so on; that is, to end, psychologically, every day, so that the mind remains fresh, young and innocent? That is death. And to come upon that there must be no shadow of fear. To give up without argument, without any resistance. That is dying. Have you ever tried it? To give up without a murmur, without restraint, without resistance, the thing that gives you most pleasure (the things that are painful, of course, one wants to give up in any case). Actually to let go. Try it. Then, if you do it, you will see that the mind becomes extraordinarily alert, alive and sensitive, free and unburdened. Old age then takes on quite a different meaning, not something to be dreaded.<!-- p. 135

Note of release of Flash Authoring Files for the feature-length animated film Sita Sings the Blues at " Sita Sings the Blues Files", archive.org, (2008) https://archive.org/details/Sita_Sings_the_Blues_Files<!-- 9 July 2016 -->
Context: Yes, I know bad bad people can also use the. fla files for dastardly deeds (the dreaded hypothetical “Nazi Porn Version” that always comes up at Q&A’s). Bad bad people can use our shared Language and Technology for evil too, but I’m not going to constipate culture out of fear of imaginary worst-case scenarios. I’m confident much more good will come from this than bad, and that’s motivation enough for me. It’s Free Culture, baby. If programmers can tinker with the Free Software’s source code, artists can tinker with Sita Sings the Blues‘ source files.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: In the Middle Ages, there was a scarcity of information but its very scarcity made it both important and usable. This began to change, as everyone knows, in the late 15th century when a goldsmith named Gutenberg, from Mainz, converted an old wine press into a printing machine, and in so doing, created what we now call an information explosion.... Nothing could be more misleading than the idea that computer technology introduced the age of information. The printing press began that age, and we have not been free of it since.

Strategic objectives of new Government (May 23, 2007)
Context: We must take the lead in the green energy revolution. This country has played a hugely influential role in the development of green technology but we need to take that to another level. I want Scotland to become the pre-eminent location for clean energy research and development in Europe. Becoming a world leader in the development of renewable technology provides a happy marriage of economic advantage and meeting the fundamental challenges of climate change head on. We have the natural resources, the know-how and the skills for Scotland to become the green energy capital of Europe.... This country - our country - in a unique position to exploit all of these technologies.... I want to see a Scotland that is nuclear free. A Scotland that uses its natural resources and know-how to deliver clean and secure energy supplies. And a Scotland that develops new clean energy technologies that can be exported and used throughout the world.

Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect
Context: These are the great ancient temples of Karnak, on the edge of the Nile about 450 miles south of Cairo. They were the center of Egyptian religion, built in the imperial city of Thebes, when the Egyptian empire was at its height, the greatest power in the world. This was the New York of its time. The temples were built over a period of 2,000 years, each pharaoh adding his bit, leaving his name in stone, to last forever. Inside the temple domain, there were 65 towns, 433 gardens & orchards, 400,000 animals, and it took 80,000 people just to run the place. Small wonder that centuries afterwards the Greeks and Romans came here and gawked like peasants at a civilisation that made their efforts look like well-dressed mud huts. It still has that effect today. You come here from the great modern cities, full of the immense power of modern technology at your finger tips, press a button, turn a switch. And this place... stops you dead.

From the Vintage paperback (1973), p. xvii
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: Again I want to emphasize that the study of propaganda must be conducted within the context of a technological society. Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world.

1962, Rice University speech
Context: We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

Connections (1979), 9 - Countdown
Context: If you believe that science and technology have given us the highest standard of living in history or that they have trapped us inside of a machine we can't escape from, we live in a situation we inherited, as a result of a long and complex series of events through history. At no time in the past could anybody have known that what they were doing then would end up like this now.

As quoted in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995) by Carl Sagan.
Context: The Spanish Inquisition sought to avoid direct responsibility for the burning of heretics by handing them over to the secular arm; to burn them itself, it piously explained, would be wholly inconsistent with its Christian principles. Few of us would allow the Inquisition thus easily to wipe its hands clean of bloodshed; it knew quite well what would happen. Equally, where the technological application of scientific discoveries is clear and obvious — as when a scientist works on nerve gases — he cannot properly claim that such applications are "none of his business," merely on the ground that it is the military forces, not scientists, who use the gases to disable or kill. This is even more obvious when the scientist deliberately offers help to governments, in exchange for funds.
If a scientist, or a philosopher, accepts funds from some such body as an office of naval research, then he is cheating if he knows his work will be useless to them and must take some responsibility for the outcome if he knows that it will be useful. He is subject, properly subject, to praise or blame in relation to any innovations which flow from his work.

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)
Context: Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin’s theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. We’ve repeatedly tested this prediction, and the results overwhelmingly support Darwin. At high speeds, Einstein realized that time slows down, and curmudgeons on the Swedish Nobel committee found this so weird that they refused to give him the Nobel Prize for his relativity theory. At low temperatures, liquid helium can flow upward. At high temperatures, colliding particles change identity; to me, an electron colliding with a positron and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship. On microscopic scales, particles schizophrenically appear in two places at once, leading to the quantum conundrums mentioned above. On astronomically large scales… weirdness strikes again: if you intuitively understand all aspects of black holes [then you] should immediately put down this book and publish your findings before someone scoops you on the Nobel Prize for quantum gravity… [also, ] the leading theory for what happened [in the early universe] suggests that space isn’t merely really really big, but actually infinite, containing infinitely many exact copies of you, and even more near-copies living out every possible variant of your life in two different types of parallel universes.

Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 8 : Quick Is Beautiful, p. 135
Context: The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.

May 1997, World Wide Developers Conference (online video) http://everystevejobsvideo.com/qa-with-steve-jobs-wwdc-1997/52:15/52:22
1990s

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)
Context: If we're ever going to get the world back on a natural footing, back in tune with natural rhythyms, if we're going to nurture the Earth and protect it and have fun with it and learn from it — which is what mothers do with their children — then we've got to put technology (an aggressive masculine system) in its proper place, which is that of a tool to be used sparingly, joyfully, gently and only in the fullest cooperation with nature. Nature must govern technology, not the other way around.

Progress In Religion (2000)
Context: All through our history, we have been changing the world with our technology. Our technology has been of two kinds, green and grey. Green technology is seeds and plants, gardens and vineyards and orchards, domesticated horses and cows and pigs, milk and cheese, leather and wool. Grey technology is bronze and steel, spears and guns, coal and oil and electricity, automobiles and airplanes and rockets, telephones and computers. Civilization began with green technology, with agriculture and animal-breeding, ten thousand years ago. Then, beginning about three thousand years ago, grey technology became dominant, with mining and metallurgy and machinery. For the last five hundred years, grey technology has been racing ahead and has given birth to the modern world of cities and factories and supermarkets.
The dominance of grey technology is now coming to an end.

Narration for Crash! (1971), a short film by Harley Cokeliss
Context: I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape. The sense of violence and desire, power and energy; the shared experience of moving together through an elaborately signalled landscape.
We spend a substantial part of our lives in the motor car, and the experience of driving condenses many of the experiences of being a human being in the 1970s, the marriage of the physical aspects of ourselves with the imaginative and technological aspects of our lives. I think the 20th century reaches its highest expression on the highway. Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death.

UTI interview (2004)
Context: I’m a teenage kid who’s interested in improving the world (mostly through law, politics, and technology).
This year, I’m going to try to update my weblog daily with interesting thoughts, program some interesting new website software, and work on some website projects that help people better understand what’s going on in American politics.

55 min 20 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]
Context: Since this series' maiden voyage, the impossible has come to pass: Mighty walls that maintained insuperable ideological differences have come tumbling down; deadly enemies have embraced and begun to work together. The imperative to cherish the Earth and protect the global environment that sustains all of us has become widely accepted, and we've begun, finally, the process of reducing the obscene number of weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps we have, after all, decided to choose life. But we still have light years to go to ensure that choice. Even after the summits and the ceremonies and the treaties, there are still some 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world — and it would require the detonation of only a tiny fraction of them to produce a nuclear winter, the predicted global climatic catastrophe that would result from the smoke and the dust lifted into the atmosphere by burning cities and petroleum facilities.
The world scientific community has begun to sound the alarm about the grave dangers posed by depleting the protective ozone shield and by greenhouse warming, and again we're taking some mitigating steps, but again those steps are too small and too slow. The discovery that such a thing as nuclear winter was really possible evolved out of the studies of Martian dust storms. The surface of Mars, fried by ultraviolet light, is also a reminder of why it's important to keep our ozone layer intact. The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus is a valuable reminder that we must take the increasing greenhouse effect on Earth seriously.
Important lessons about our environment have come from spacecraft missions to the planets. By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one. By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds. It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history.
Our science and our technology have posed us a profound question. Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it's too late? Will we see our species safely through this difficult passage so that our children and grandchildren will continue the great journey of discovery still deeper into the mysteries of the Cosmos? That same rocket and nuclear and computer technology that sends our ships past the farthest known planet can also be used to destroy our global civilization. Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, “I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you.”

EPCOT promotional film (1966)
Context: EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.

Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
Context: Two opposing world-views — the technological and the traditional — coexisted in uneasy tension. The technological was the stronger, of course, but the traditional was there — still functional, still exerting influence... This is what we find documented not only in Mark Twain but in the poetry of Walt Whitman, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, the prose of Thoreau, the philosophy of Emerson, the novels of Hawthorne and Melville, and, most vividly of all, in Alexis de Tocqueville's monumental Democracy in America. In a word, two distinct thought-worlds were rubbing against each other in nineteenth-century America.

Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Journeys in Space and Time [Episode 8], 54 min 55 sec
Context: Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity we could plunge our world into a time of darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.

Free Culture (2004)
Context: Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.
In addition to these important harms, there is one more that was important to our forebears, but seems forgotten today. Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.
The war that is being waged today is a war of prohibition. As with every war of prohibition, it is targeted against the behavior of a very large number of citizens. According to The New York Times, 43 million Americans downloaded music in May 2002. According to the RIAA, the behavior of those 43 million Americans is a felony. We thus have a set of rules that transform 20 percent of America into criminals.

Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 186

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)
Context: Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States — and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration. Printing created prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression. Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into an exercise in superstition. Printing assisted in the growth of the nation-state but, in so doing, made patriotism into a sordid if not a murderous emotion. Another way of saying this is that a new technology tends to favor some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological change, in other words, always results in winners and losers.

"Neil Postman Ponders High Tech" at Online Newshour : Online Forum (17 January 1996)
Context: Even when the problem of the access to technology is solved so that anyone who wishes can have access to technology, there still remains a problem. For example, just about anyone has access to a public library (at least in America). In that library we find the greatest, most profound, most illuminating literature that human beings have so far produced. Do most people read these books? Have you read Cervantes? Have you read the sonnets of Shakespeare? Have you read Hegel or Nietzsche? Their books are in the library, you have access to them, why have you not familiarized yourself with this literature? (Even if you have, I think you will agree that most people have not. Why?)

Physics in my generation (1956)
Context: America has grown by expansion in a practical vacuum; the pioneers of the West had to overcome terrific natural obstacles, but negligible human resistance. The Russia of today had to conquer not only natural but human difficulties: she had to break up the rotten system of the Czars and to assimilate backward Asiatic tribes; now she has set herself the task of bringing her brand of modernization to the ancient civilizations of the Far East. For this purpose it is indispensable to have a well-defined doctrine full of slogans, which appeals to the needs and instincts of the poverty-stricken masses. Thus one understands the power which Marx's philosophy has gained in the East.
What can we scientists do in this conflict? We can join the spiritual, religious, philosophical forces, which reject war on ethical grounds. We can even attack the ideological foundations of the conflict itself. For science is not only the basis of technology but also the material for a sound philosophy.

New Mindset on Consciousness (1987)
Context: I have a very one-track mind that needs to concentrate. I asked myself which issue is more important: whether mental states are more left- or right-hemispheric, or whether they are causal in brain function. From weighing the pros and cons, I decided that the left-brain, right-brain work was well in orbit and that it would be more important to shift my primary focus to consciousness.
The mind-brain issues are intrinsically more compelling. They carry strong humanistic as well as scientific implications. I could foresee changes in our world view, guiding beliefs, and social values. In the context of today's worsening world conditions and our imperiled future, this work seemed far more important than whether you can find a brain theory enabling people to learn faster, draw better, make better medical diagnoses, and so on.
We're beginning to learn the hard way that today's global ills are not cured by more and more science and technology.

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.

canular refers to hoaxes, humorous deceptions.
The Paris Review interview (1984)
Context: You know, the Cathars believed that the world was not created by God but by a demon who had stolen a few technological secrets from Him and made this world — which is why it doesn’t work. I don’t share this heresy. I’m too afraid! But I put it in a play called This Extraordinary Brothel, in which the protagonist doesn’t talk at all. There is a revolution, everybody kills everybody else, and he doesn’t understand. But at the very end, he speaks for the first time. He points his finger towards the sky and shakes it at God, saying, “You rogue! You little rogue!” and he bursts out laughing. He understands that the world is an enormous farce, a canular played by God against man, and that he has to play God’s game and laugh about it.

Quoted on Yahoo News! India, "Pranab Mukherjee congratulates ISRO for successful launch of PSLV-C24" https://in.news.yahoo.com/pranab-mukherjee-congratulates-isro-successful-launch-pslv-c24-154506512.html, April 4, 2014.
Context: My heartiest congratulations to you and your entire team at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for the successful launch of PSLV-C24, carrying the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS)-1B. The launch of PSLV-C24, with IRNSS-1B marks an important landmark in our space programme and demonstrates, yet again, India's capabilities in space launch technology. The nation will immensely benefit from the applications of IRNSS which include terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation, disaster management, vehicle tracking and fleet management etc. Kindly convey my greetings to the members of your team of scientists, engineers, technologists and all others associated with this great mission. Our nation is grateful for their hard work and proud of their accomplishments.

We the People interview (1996)
Context: Inevitably modern technology has polarized society. It has polluted the environment. It has disabled very simple native abilities and made people dependent on objects... Like an automobile which makes the world inaccessible, when actually in Latin "automobile" means "using your feet to get somewhere." The automobile makes it unthinkable. I was recently told, "You're a liar!" when I said to somebody I walked down the spine of the Andes. Every Spaniard in the sixteenth, seventeenth century did that. The idea that somebody could just walk! He can jog perhaps in the morning, but he can't walk anywhere! The world has become inaccessible because we drive there.

Speech to the UN General Assembly (7 December 1988)
Context: We are witnessing most profound social change. Whether in the East or the South, the West or the North, hundreds of millions of people, new nations and states, new public movements and ideologies have moved to the forefront of history. Broad-based and frequently turbulent popular movements have given expression, in a multidimensional and contradictory way, to a longing for independence, democracy and social justice. The idea of democratizing the entire world order has become a powerful socio-political force. At the same time, the scientific and technological revolution has turned many economic, food, energy, environmental, information and population problems, which only recently we treated as national or regional ones, into global problems. Thanks to the advances in mass media and means of transportation, the world seems to have become more visible and tangible. International communication has become easier than ever before.

Context: The Internet represents the greatest story telling technology since the development of language. It will be far more important than reading and writing as a purposeful tool. Everything that is enabled by story telling will be enabled by the Internet.

Quoted by Peter Guber, in

Responsible Scientific Investigation and Application (1976)
Context: Without wanting to seem overly partisan, I would like simply to point out that the space program has by all standards become America's greatest generator of new ideas in science and technology. It is essentially an organization for opening new frontiers, physically and intellectually. Today we live in a different world because in 1958 Americans accepted the challenge of space and made the required national investment to meet it.
Young people today are learning a new science, but even more importantly, they are viewing the earth and man's relationship to it quite differently — and I think perhaps more humanly — than we did fifteen years ago. The space program is the first large scientific and technological activity in history that offers to bring the people of all nations together instead of setting them further apart.

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.

Translation of his defense testimony at his 1999 trial http://web.archive.org/20020203190623/www.geocities.com/kurdifi/ocelan.html.

Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Context: Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Telecosm : How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World (2000), p. 31
Context: Let there be light, says the Bible. All the firmaments of technology, all our computers and networks, are built with light, and of light, and for light, to hasten its spread around the world. Light glows on the telescom's periphery; it shines as its core; it illuminates its webs and its links. From Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein to Richard Feynman and Charles Townes, the more men have gazed at light, the more it turns out to be a phenomenon utterly different from anything else. And yet everything else — every atom and every molecula — is fraught with its oscillating intensity.

A Sense of the Mysterious : Science and the Human Spirit (2005), p. 200<!-- Pantheon Books isbn=0375423206 -->
Context: In the 1950s, academics forecast that as a result of new technology, by the year 2000 we could have a twenty-hour workweek. Such a development would be a beautiful example of technology at the service of the human being.... According to the Bureau of Statistics, the goods and services produced per hour of work in the United States has indeed more than doubled since 1950.... However, instead of reducing the workweek, the increased efficiencies and productivities have gone into increasing the salaries of workers.... Workers... rather have used their increased efficiencies and resulting increased disposable income to purchase more material goods.... Indeed, in a cruel irony, the workweek has actually lengthened.... More work is required to pay for more consumption, fueled by more production, in an endless, vicious circle.

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004
Context: The Unix room still exists, and it may be the greatest cultural reason for the success of Unix as a technology. More groups could profit from its lesson, but it's really hard to add a Unix-room-like space to an existing organization. You need the culture to encourage people not to hide in their offices, you need a way of using systems that makes a public machine a viable place to work - typically by storing the data somewhere other than the "desktop" - and you need people like Ken and Dennis (and Brian Kernighan and Doug McIlroy and Mike Lesk and Stu Feldman and Greg Chesson and...) hanging out in the room, but if you can make it work, it's magical. When I first started at the Labs, I spent most of my time in the Unix room. The buzz was palpable; the education unparalleled.

"Journeying to democracy" in The Boston Globe (18 October 2007) http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/10/18/journeying_to_democracy/
Context: I fully understand the men behind Al Qaeda. They have tried to assassinate me twice before. The Pakistan Peoples Party and I represent everything they fear the most — moderation, democracy, equality for women, information, and technology. We represent the future of a modern Pakistan, a future that has no place in it for ignorance, intolerance, and terrorism.
The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated. I will step out on the tarmac in Karachi not to complete a journey, but to begin one. Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it.

"Neil Postman Ponders High Tech" at Online Newshour : Online Forum (17 January 1996) http://www.promotesigns.com/postman_1-17.html, also slightly paraphrased in Theology of TV : The Impact of TV (2010) by Christian Mogler, p. 24, as "While we can ́t do much about the rapid growth of new technology, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology."
Context: I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology. A new technology helps to fuel the economy, and any discussion of slowing its growth has to take account of economic consequences. However, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology. The "forum" that I think is best suited for this is our educational system. If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Context: Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs. Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity's superhuman achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved. They also believe that information is an unmixed blessing, which through its continued and uncontrolled production and dissemination offers increased freedom, creativity, and peace of mind. The fact that information does none of these things — but quite the opposite — seems to change few opinions, for unwavering beliefs are an inevitable product of the structure of Technopoly. In particular, Technopoly flourishes when the defenses against information break down.
Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: In the midst of increasing mechanization and technological organization, propaganda is simply the means used to prevent these things from being felt as too oppressive and to persuade man to submit with good grace. When man will be fully adapted to this technological society, when he will end by obeying with enthusiasm, convinced of the excellence of what he is forced to do, the constraint of the organization will no longer be felt by him; the truth is, it will no longer be a constraint, and the police will have nothing to do. The civic and technological good will and the enthusiasm for the right social myths — both created by propaganda — will finally have solved the problem of man.

Vintage, p. xviii

The Question Concerning Technology (1954)
Context: Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.

Quoted on The Kerala, "Quality of education needs improvement: Pranab Mukherjee" http://www.newkerala.com/news/2014/fullnews-32741.html#.U0AOLqLD-y8, April 3, 2014.
Context: Science, education, research and innovation are the four pillars on which the development as well as the work culture of a nation rests. Scientific temperament cannot happen unless we improve the delivery of education at all levels. The government [India] has announced the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy. One of the key elements of the policy is to position India among the top five global scientific powers by 2020.

Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
Context: Technological competition ignites total war, which means it is not possible to contain the effects of a new technology to a limited sphere of human activity... What we need to consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how, in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school.

Section 29
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Context: A fateful process is set in motion when the individual is released "to the freedom of his own impotence" and left to justify his existence by his own efforts. The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations.
The individual on his own is stable only so long as he is possessed of self-esteem. The maintenance of self-esteem is a continuous task which taxes all of the individual's powers and inner resources. We have to prove our worth and justify our existence anew each day. When, for whatever reason, self-esteem is unattainable, the autonomous individual becomes a highly explosive entity. He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride — the explosive substitute for self-esteem. All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride.

Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 245