Quotes about technology
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“I love and hate technology.
Texting or emailing is one step away from true and real communication.
What happened to people and their communication skills?”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Love, Hate, People, Communication

“Technology does not lead us to stars, human love does.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Love, Star

“The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, led them into it in the first place, and continues to do so today.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

As quoted in The Guardian (1995), and in "Biting back at Microsoft" (5 June 2001) http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2001/jun/05/guardianletters3

Idea, Appearance

“You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”

Walker Percy (1916–1990) Southern philosophical novelist

Source: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Age, Idea

“Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.”

Laurie Anderson (1947) American musician

“9) Ethics change with technology.”

Larry Niven book N-Space

Niven's Laws
Source: N-Space

Change

“The human spirit must prevail over technology.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers, and they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers — which is why almost no technology ever works.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

BBC interview http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/11/20/john_cleese_die_another_day_interview.shtml on Die Another Day (20 November 2002)]

Death

“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it…
- They know nothing.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Science, Parting

“Our technology forces us to live mythically”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

“What is technology?" Cian pulled his brother inside, pushed the button for the next floor. "It's another god.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Morrigan's Cross

God

“This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. - Murray (WN 285)”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

Source: White Noise: Text and Criticism

Nature, Universe

“Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)
On Clarke's Laws
Source: Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry Into the Limits of the Possible

Law

“Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it's available. When the cost comes down, look out!”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Truth

“School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.”

Ivan Illich book Deschooling Society

Source: Deschooling Society

Age, World, School, Religion

“It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

God

“Every thinking person fears nuclear war and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it's madness, and every country has an excuse.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

17 min 40 sec
Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

War, Fear, Thinking, Personality

“Americans worship technology. It's an inherent trait in the national zeitgeist.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variants: I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots. I fear the day when technology overlaps our humanity. It will be then that the world will have permanent ensuing generations of idiots. 1995 film Powder includes a similar quotation attributed to Einstein: It’s become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity. Although it is a popular quote on the internet, there is no substantial evidence that Einstein actually said that. It does not appear in "The Ultimate Quotable Einstein" from Princeton University Press nor in any reliable source. " Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/19/tech-surpass/" concluded that it probably emerged as a meme on the internet as late as 2012. Misattributed

World, Fear

“What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Life, Wisdom, School, Learning

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."

(Acceptance speech,, November 17, 2010)”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Books, World, Beauty

“I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time.”

Bill Bryson book At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Source: At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Age, History, Time

“Humans are the reproductive organs of technology.”

Kevin Kelly book What Technology Wants

Source: What Technology Wants

“HOBBES:
All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

People

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956); later in Collected Essays (1959), p. 293
Source: Ends and Means

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) http://www.csicop.org/si/show/why_we_need_to_understand_science

Science, Dependency

“I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Age, Thinking

“Even those who do not, or cannot, avail themselves of a scientific education, choose to benefit from the technology that is made possible by the scientific education of others.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

Source: A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love

Education

“Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

Source: Mein Kampf

Lie, Communication

“Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

Books

“We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Bringing Science Down to Earth (1994), co-authored with Anne Kalosh, in Hemispheres (October 1994), p. 99 http://books.google.com/books?id=gJ1rDj2nR3EC&lpg=PA99&pg=PA99; this is similar to statements either mentioned in earlier interviews or published later in the book The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995) Variants: We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. "Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) http://www.csicop.org/si/show/why_we_need_to_understand_science Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world. "With Science on Our Side" https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1994/01/09/with-science-on-our-side/9e5d2141-9d53-4b4b-aa0f-7a6a0faff845/, Washington Post (9 January 1994) We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it? Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553, May 27, 1996. I know that science and technology are not just cornucopias pouring good deeds out into the world. Scientists not only conceived nuclear weapons; they also took political leaders by the lapels, arguing that their nation — whichever it happened to be — had to have one first. … There’s a reason people are nervous about science and technology. And so the image of the mad scientist haunts our world—from Dr. Faust to Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strangelove to the white-coated loonies of Saturday morning children’s television. (All this doesn’t inspire budding scientists.) But there’s no way back. We can’t just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged. Rather, its awesome power forces on all of us, including politicians, a new responsibility — more attention to the long-term consequences of technology, a global and transgenerational perspective, an incentive to avoid easy appeals to nationalism and chauvinism. Mistakes are becoming too expensive. "Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science. "Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) Science is [...] a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along. Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553 (27 May 1996)

Understanding, Science, Dependency

“Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: The Future Of Life

Science

“Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Feeling

“This situation [alienation] can therefore [according to Durkheim] be remedied by providing the individual with a moral awareness of the social importance of his particular role in the division of labour. He is then no longer an alienated automaton. but is a useful part of an organic whole: ‘from that time, as special and uniform as his activity may be, it is that of an intelligent being, for it has direction, and he is aware of it.’ This is entirely consistent with Durkheim’s general account of the growth of the division of labour, and its relationship to human freedom. It is only through moral acceptance in his particular role in the division of labour that the individual is able to achieve a high degree of autonomy as a self-conscious being, and can escape both the tyranny of rigid moral conformity demanded in undifferentiated societies on the one hand and the tyranny of unrealisable desires on the other.
Not the moral integration of the individual within a differentiated division of labour but the effective dissolution of the division of labour as an organising principle of human social intercourse, is the premise of Marx’s conception. Marx nowhere specifies in detail how this future society would be organised socially, but, at any rate,. this perspective differs decisively from that of Durkheim. The vision of a highly differentiated division of labour integrated upon the basis of moral norms of individual obligation and corporate solidarity. is quite at variance with Marx’s anticipation of the future form of society.
According to Durkheim’s standpoint. the criteria underlying Marx’s hopes for the elimination of technological alienation represent a reversion to moral principles which are no longer appropriate to the modern form of society. This is exactly the problem which Durkheim poses at the opening of The Division of Labour: ‘Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being. one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism?’ The analysis contained in the work, in Durkheim’s view, demonstrates conclusively that organic solidarity is the ‘normal’ type in modern societies, and consequently that the era of the ‘universal man’ is finished. The latter ideal, which predominated up to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in western Europe is incompatible with the diversity of the contemporary order. In preserving this ideal. by contrast. Marx argues the obverse: that the tendencies which are leading to the destruction of capitalism are themselves capable of effecting a recovery of the ‘universal’ properties of man. which are shared by every individual.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 230-231.

Hope, Intelligence, Problem, Decision

“Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources”

Gerardine DeSanctis (1954–2005) American organizational theorist

Gerardine DeSanctis, Brad M. Jackson, in: Coordination of information technology management: team-based structures and computer-based communication systems http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1189653, Journal of Management Information Systems - Special issue: Information technology and organization design Volume 10 Issue 4, March 1994, pp 85-110.

Business, Change

“It is a curious thing that relatively little attention has been directed toward working out methods for keeping the peace in a disarmed world. The technological The technological developments of the last twenty years have made disarmament a major concern of most nations, for it has become apparent that war is no longer an effective means for settling disputes between the great powers.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

Alexander Rich and John R. Platt (1966) "How to Keep the Peace" in: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. April 1966. p. 14

War, World, Peace

“Human beings are the only animals who have the capacity to envisage something that is not present or something that does not yet exist but which is merely possible. The imagination has thus been the cause of our major achievements in science and technology as well as in art and religion.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

Source: A History of God (1993), Chapter 7, God of the Mystics

Religion, Art, Imagination, Science

“Technology is dad-at-home friendly. It allows the family to be more creative and role flexible than it ever has in the past without being poor in the process.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 239.

Family, Home, Past

“In the past, socializing men to become the best killer-protectors led to the survival of the “fittest.” In the future, with nuclear technology, training killers is more likely to lead to the destruction of everyone.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Men, Past, Future, Training

“We desperately need to recognise that we are the guests, not the masters, of nature and adopt a new paradigm for development, based on the costs and benefits to all people, and bound by the limits of nature herself rather than the limits of technology and consumerism.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in Planet Savers : 301 Extraordinary Environmentalists (2008) by Kevin Desmond, p. 248
1990s

People, Nature

“I'm not happy exporting jobs but we must move ahead in technology and patents. I don't like losing any jobs but we'll see new opportunities created selling products there. We'll have a net net increase in economic activity, just as we did with free trade. It's tempting to want to protect our markets and stay closed. But at some point it all comes crashing down and you're hopelessly left behind. Then you are Russia.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

"Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's Message: Globalize or Die", CRN.com, 2005-12-16 http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=HV04UPK5RVOU2QSNDBNCKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleID=174300587 2003–2007 Governor of Massachusetts

Happiness

“The artist is the person who invents the means to bridge biological inheritance and the environments created by technological innovation.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 98

Personality

“The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Message to Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty written to Congress (8 Feb 1965), in Lyndon B. Johnson: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President (1965), Vol.1, 156. United States. President (1963-1969 : Johnson), Lyndon Baines Johnson, United States. Office of the Federal Register — 1970
1960s

World, Beauty, Nature, Problem

“The cultural obsession with the art object is slowly disappearing and being replaced by what might be called "systems consciousness." Actually, this shifts from the direct shaping of matter to a concern for organizing quantities of energy and information. Seen another way, it is a refocusing of aesthetic awareness – based on future scientific-technological evolution – on matter-energy information exchanges and away from the invention of solid artefacts. These new systems prompt us not to look at the skin of objects, but at those meaningful relations within and between their visible boundaries.”

Jack Burnham (1931) American art historian

Source: Beyond Modern Sculpture, 1968, p. 369-70

Art, Way, Future

“The ethical debates are like stones in a stream. The water runs around them. You haven't seen any biological technologies held up for one week by any of these debates.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

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

Water

“Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 5, A Defence Of Politics Against Technology, p. 106.

People, Idea

“Modern technology could advance to the point at which social engineers would be true masters of a complete conformist society which could no longer distinguished from a mass concentration camp. We might ultimately be directed by a superstructure of intelligent machines… Revolutionary changes in the next 30 years would be farther-reaching that many over the past 3.000 years.”

Fred Polak (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

Quote about the future challenges that industrial society faced due to the societal catastrophe, which was considered to be 20 to 50 years away. Cited in: Ian Murray (1972) " Workers told of peril of technology http://www.kwilliam-kapp.de/pdf/Kapp%20in%20NYT%2072.pdf". In: The Times, April 16, 1972

Intelligence, Change, Past

“The more interconnected a technology is, the more opportunities it spawns for both use and misuse.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“Many of our fellow citizens do not share the blind faith in the simple beneficence of all technological innovation. And because they do not share the corporealist, morally neutral, and in some cases atheistic world-view that they attribute (fairly or not) to science and scientists, they are reluctant to surrender the power of decision to the very people who they think are creating the problem.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Forbidding Science: Some Beginning Reflections (2006)

People, World, Faith, Problem

“She didn’t have to believe the technology existed. She only had to believe that people believed the technology existed. People, being stupid, believed all sorts of things.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 4, “The Mystery of the Champagne Supernovae” (p. 128).
Jack Glass (2012)

People, Stupidity

“A pencil is a simple and predictable piece of technology. There's only one way of it working (it will function when it is sharp), and an obvious failure model(too short, too blunt, no lead). With a car, especially the kind of limp-along rust bucket most of us got for our first ride, it's more complex. There's coaxing involved, especially on cold mornings. There's that noise that never amounts to anything but never goes away, random stalls you begin to put down to the cast of the moon. None of it means it's broken, just that it requires friendly attention, that it has needs. Gradually you acquire a ritualized relationship to it, a bond forged by its unpredictability, by the fact it has to be dealt with. Which is how you come to know people, after all: not by things they have in common with everyone else, but through learning your way around their eccentricities, their hard edges and unpredictable softnesses, the things that make them different from everybody else.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 11

People, Cars, Way, Failure

“Culture has become a system of defense against technics. This defense appears as a defense of man based on the assumption that technical objects contain no human reality. We should like to show that culture fails to take into account that there is a human reality in technical reality and that, if it is to fully play its role, culture must come to incorporate technical entities into its body of knowledge and its sense of values. Recognition of the modes of existence of technical objects should be the result of philosophical thought, which in this respect has to achieve what is analogous to the role it played in the abolition of slavery and in the affirmation of the value of the human person. The opposition established between culture and technology, between man and machine, is false and is not well-founded; what underlies it is mere ignorance or resentment. Behind the mask of a facile humanism it hides a reality that is rich in human efforts and natural forces, a reality that constitutes the world of technical objects, mediators between nature and man.”

Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989) 20th century French philosopher

Source: Du mode d'existence des object technique (1958), p. 1 (http://www.academia.edu/4184556)

World, Nature, Knowledge, Reality

“The clustering of technological innovation in time and space helps explain both the uneven growth among nations and the rise and decline of hegemonic powers.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Three, Dynamics Of Political Economy, p. 109

Time, Help

“With phones moving to technologies such as Apple Pay, an unwillingness to assure security could create a Target-like exposure that wipes Apple out of the market.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

How to Spot a Tech Company That's About to Lose http://cio.com/article/2686157/leadership-management/how-to-spot-a-tech-company-thats-about-to-lose.html in CIO (19 September 2014)

“What’s important is not just to develop the technology; it’s to develop the processes.”

Hal Abelson (1947) computer scientist

Source: mitcet http://www.edpath.com/mitcet.htm

“The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at but at the front lines, with people and the work itself — which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge.”

Thomas A. Kochan (1947) American academic

Source: "Beyond McGregor’s Theory Y", 2002, p. 2: introduction; Republished in: Douglas McGregor. The Human Side of Enterprise 1960/2006. p. 366

People, Nature, Knowledge

“If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology.”

Clifford D. Simak book A Heritage of Stars

A Heritage of Stars (1977)

“At the beginning of the last two decades of our century, we find ourselves in a state of profound, world-wide crisis. It is a complex, multi-dimensional crisis whose facets touch every aspect of our lives - our health and livelihood, the quality of our environment and our social relationships, our economy, technology, and politics. It is a crisis of intellectual, moral, and spiritual dimensions; a crisis of a scale and urgency unprecedented in recorded human history. For the first time we have to face the very real threat of extinction of the human race and of all life on this planet.”

Fritjof Capra book The Turning Point

Source: The Turning Point (1982), Ch. 1. The Turning of the Tide.

Life, Health, World, History

“Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and the changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a “living” document. But we have a long way to go to get our modern privacy laws in line with modern technology.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

"Privacy and Civil Liberties in the Digital Age" in WIRED (2 March 2012) http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/opinion-franken-privacyliberties/

Law, Way, Change

“Look, this is simple. The good old days are now. OK? The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

1990s, Schafer interview (1995)

“For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle. And it was… nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.”

Rickard Falkvinge (1972) former head of the Swedish Pirate Party

P2P Consortium Interview http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=15274 (January 12, 2008)

Money, Nature, Knowledge, Change

“Legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

"The Guardian profile : Tim Berners-Lee"(12 August 2005) http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/aug/12/uknews.onlinesupplement

Sex, Way

“Apple is becoming more and more like a typical tech firm — that is, long on technology and short on magic. … Apple is drifting closer and closer to where it was back in the 1990s. It offers advancements that largely follow those made by others years earlier, product proliferation, a preference for more over simple elegance, and waning excitement.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Hearing Crickets at Apple's WWDC and a Pin Drop in the Senate http://technewsworld.com/story/84597.html in Tech News World (12 June 2017)

“In today's volatile world, organizational design is an everyday, ongoing activity and challenge for every executive, whether managing a global enterprise or a small work team. Globalization, worldwide competition, deregulation, and ever-new technologies drive the ongoing reassessment of the organization. The executive response has been many new forms of organizational design: virtual, learning, modular, cellular, network, alliance, or spaghetti – to name a few. New organizational forms challenge old ways of organizing for efficiency and effectiveness. Yet fundamental design principles underlie any well-functioning organization. Organizations still require a formal design.”

Gerardine DeSanctis (1954–2005) American organizational theorist

Richard M. Burton ‎Børge Obel, ‎Gerardine DeSanctis (2011). Organizational Design: A Step-by-Step Approach. p. 3

World, Way, Learning

“The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Six, Multinational Corporations, p. 260

World

“Developing countries can leapfrog several stages in the development process through the application of bio-technology in agriculture”

M. S. Swaminathan (1925) Indian scientist

From [Prasad, Jagdish, Prasad, Arbind, Development Planning for Agriculture: Policies, Economic Implications, Inputs, Production and Marketing, http://books.google.com/books?id=d_eGATn4SHIC&pg=PA93, 1994, Mittal Publications, 978-81-7099-569-2, 93–]

Country

“I think it was when I got to the butterflies -- in that brief, beautiful image comprising life, death and technology -- that the hair on the back of my neck began to stand on end. All at once, the pleasure I took in reading was altered irrevocably. Before then I had never noticed, somehow, that stories were made not of ideas or exciting twists of plot but of language. And not merely of pretty words and neat turns of phrase, but of systems of imagery, strategies of metaphor.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Close Encounters http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62470-2002Apr4, Washington Post (April 7, 2002) On reading Rocket Man by Ray Bradbury

Life, Death, Pleasure, Beauty

“The longwall method [can be] regarded as a technological system expressive of the prevailing outlook of mass-production engineering and as a social structure consisting of the occupational roles that have been institutionalized in its use.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 5

“[T]hree of [Newt Gingrich's] "Five Principles of American Civilization" deal with business, technology, and organization — all characteristics of work. There is no mention of liberty or equality or, for that matter, of democracy.”

John Ralston Saul book The Unconscious Civilization

The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

Democracy, Business

“A common issue with SF settings is that causally disconnected civilizations nevertheless are close enough in technological development that conflict is possible, rather than it being a matter of laser cannons against a thin film of single celled organisms.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[loquls$32v$1@reader1.panix.com, 2014]
2010s

“As South Korea shows, active participation in international trade does not require free trade. Indeed, had South Korea pursued free trade and not promoted infant industries, it would not have become a major trading nation. It would still be exporting raw materials (e. g., tungsten ore, fish, seaweed) or low-technology, low-price products (e. g., textiles, garments, wigs made with human hair) that used to be its main export items in the 1960s.”

Ha-Joon Chang book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

Source: Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008), Ch. 3, More trade, fewer ideologies, p. 82

Fish

“Open platforms and experimental amateurs … eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros. … Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)" on BoingBoing (2 April 2010) http://boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-yo.html

“There are times when a company’s know-how, product range, and labor relations are in harmony with the world around it. The business situations are familiar, the company is well organized, and employees are trained and prepared. During those times, managers do not need to develop and implement new ideas. Their job is to allocate resources to promote growth and development, channeling capital and people to the parts of the organization best positioned to benefit from the current state of affairs. Those parts of the organization then become larger, better established, and more powerful.
But just when the company has organized itself, outside circumstances may change. New technologies come on the scene, markets shift, interest rates fluctuate, consumers’ tastes change, and the company must enter a new phase of life. In order to stay in sync with the outside world, it must be able to alter its marketing strategy, its product range, its organizational form, and where and how it does its manufacturing. And once a company has adapted to a new environment, it is no longer the organization it used to be; it has evolved. That is the essence of learning.”

Arie de Geus (1930) Dutch businessman

Cited in: Richard C. Huseman, Jon P. Goodman (1998), Leading with Knowledge: The Nature of Competition in the 21st Century. SAGE Publications, p. 72.
The Living Company, 1997

Life, People, World, Idea

“Shortly after taking office in 1993, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore called for a shift in American technology policy toward an expansion of public investments in partnerships with private industry.”

Lewis M. Branscomb (1926) physicist and science policy advisor

L.M. Branscomb, J.H. Keller (1999) Investing in innovation: creating a research and innovation policy that works.

Partnership

“This text grew from the lecture material for the "Short Course in Operations Research" which has been offered annually (since 1952) by Case Institute of Technology.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. vii

“We in Ghana, are committed to the building of an industrialized socialist society. We cannot afford to sit still and be mere passive onlookers. We must ourselves take part in the pursuit of scientific and technological research as a means of providing the basis for our socialist society, Socialism without science is void. …”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

"Speech delivered by Osagyefo the President at the Laying of the Foundation Stone of Ghana's Atomic Reactor at Kwabenya on 25th November, 1964". As quoted ny E. A. Haizel in Education in Ghana, 1951 – 1966, in Arhin (1992), The Life and Work of Kwame Nkrumah.

Science, Parting

“It is when physicians are bogged down by their incomplete technologies, by the innumerable things they are obliged to do in medicine when they lack a clear understanding of disease mechanisms, that the deficiencies of the health-care system are most conspicuous. If I were a policy-maker, interested in saving money for health care over the long haul, I would regard it as an act of high prudence to give high priority to a lot more basic research in biologic science.”

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"The Technology of Medicine"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Money, Health, Disease, Understanding

“The new information technologies can be seen to drive societies toward increasingly dynamic high-energy regions further and further from thermodynamical equilibrium, characterized by decreasing specific entropy and increasingly dense free-energy flows, accessed and processed by more and more complex social, economic, and political structures.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Laszlo (1992) "Information Technology and Social Change: An Evolutionary Systems Analysis". Behavioral Science 37: p. 247.

“Why is it that technology is often the one to blame? On the contrary, social media encourages people to “think aloud” and come up with bold, new, controversial, or opposing ideas.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

People, Idea, Thinking

“In an age when immense technological advances have created lethal weapons which could be, and are, used by the powerful and the unprincipled to dominate the weak and the helpless, there is a compelling need for a closer relationship between politics and ethics at both the national and international levels. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations proclaims that 'every individual and every organ of society' should strive to promote the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings regardless of race, nationality or religion are entitled. But as long as there are governments whose authority is founded on coercion rather than on the mandate of the people, and interest groups which place short-term profits above long-term peace and prosperity, concerted international action to protect and promote human rights will remain at best a partially realized struggle.”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Freedom from Fear

Freedom from Fear (1991)

People, Age, Peace, Religion

“I get that I’m a little bit of an anomaly in terms of a lawyer in that a lot of lawyers don’t do the things I do, aren’t interested in the things I’m interested in. What drew me to it initially was this idea of dissent online and moving protests forward to a new generation, a new way of thinking, a new philosophy, a way to redress our grievances to the government that was unique and novel, and to have them actually listen to us about the things that are important to us. Chief among them of course was the preservation of our privacies as we move forward into the digital age, into the complete ubiquity of digital technology pervading our lives.”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As stated in The Sabu Effect: An Interview with Jay Leiderman BY RAINCOASTER on AUGUST 22, 2014 http://thecryptosphere.com/2014/08/22/the-sabu-effect-an-interview-with-jay-leiderman/

Age, Way, Idea, Thinking

“…the key factor in industry is creativity. I said there are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 163.

Business

“Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

As quoted by Barbara Gamarekian in Working Profile: Daniel J. Boorstin. Helping the Library of Congress Fulfill Its Mission http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/06/specials/boorstin-working.html, The New York Times (July 8, 1983).

Knowledge

“I've told a dark story. The truth is more mixed. A technology has given us a new freedom. Slowly, some begin to understand that this freedom need not mean anarchy. We can carry a free culture into the twenty-first century, without artists losing and without the potential of digital technology being destroyed. … Common sense must revolt. It must act to free culture. Soon, if this potential is ever to be realized.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)

Truth, Understanding, Sense, Freedom

“In this unexpected scenario, the UFO occupants -- despite their obvious technological superiority -- are desperate for both human genetic material and the ability to feel human emotions -- particularly maternal emotions. Unlikely though it may seem, it is possible that the very survival of these extraterrestrials depends upon their success in absorbing chemical and psychological properties received from human abductees.”

Budd Hopkins (1931–2011) American UFO researcher, painter and sculptor

Source: Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods (1987), p. 190

Feeling, Success, Maternity, Dependency

“In fact, the thickness of the Earth's atmosphere, compared with the size of the Earth, is in about the same ratio as the thickness of a coat of shellac on a schoolroom globe is to the diameter of the globe. That's the air that nurtures us and almost all other life on Earth, that protects us from deadly ultraviolet light from the sun, that through the greenhouse effect brings the surface temperature above the freezing point. (Without the greenhouse effect, the entire Earth would plunge below the freezing point of water and we'd all be dead.) Now that atmosphere, so thin and fragile, is under assault by our technology. We are pumping all kinds of stuff into it. You know about the concern that chlorofluorocarbons are depleting the ozone layer; and that carbon dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gases are producing global warming, a steady trend amidst fluctuations produced by volcanic eruptions and other sources. Who knows what other challenges we are posing to this vulnerable layer of air that we haven't been wise enough to foresee?”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

In Wonder and Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer (Jan-Feb 1995), 19, No. 1.

Life, Light, Water, Sun

“Instead of the primitive raw material economy, we will create a smart economy generating unique knowledge, new useful things and technologies. Instead of the archaic society, in which the leaders think and make decisions for everyone, we will become a country of intelligent, free and responsible people.”

Dmitry Medvedev (1965) Russian Prime Minister and former president

Dmitry Medvedev in a speech (November 2009)

People, Intelligence, Knowledge, Thinking

“The President recalled the very warm ties that exist between the two countries build on civilisational links of thousands of years. We felt that there are enormous opportunities of cooperation between the two countries in the field of information and digital technologies”

Sushma Swaraj (1952–2019) Indian politician

Between India and Sri Lanka, quoted on Leader Call (February 11, 2016), "Sushma Swaraj calls on Sri Lankan PM Ranil Wickremesinghe" http://leadercall.com/2016/02/sushma-swaraj-calls-on-sri-lankan-pm-ranil-wickremesinghe/

Country

“So much American science fiction is parochial -- not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way…”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Poul Anderson: Fifty Years of Science Fiction (1997)

Way, Science, Future

“Ah, spam. Where would we be without spam? I'll tell you where. We'll be living in a lush, verdant paradise, unspoilt by rejected technology, where men and women of all creeds and races can join hands and sing for the sheer joy of being alive.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

The Spam Man Cometh
Fully Ramblomatic, Features

Women, Men, Singing, Joy

“Among the many factors that have promoted economic change, I believe that technology or, rather, change in technology is the most prominent. I realize that it is dangerous to look for 'ultimate causes' in a world where everything seems to depend on everything else. But I believe that for the most part the economy, and ultimately the society, must adapt to the conditions that technology creates. If it cannot adjust to the challenges of changing technology, it fails.”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Leontief, quoted in: Carter, A.P. (1996), "Technology, Employment and the Distribution of Income: Leontief af 90," Economic Systems Research, Vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 315.

World, Change, Parting, Dependency

“Decades of providing technology in growing volume and at decreasing costs have driven great gains for developing nations, communities and people worldwide, but there is still much to do.”

Paul Otellini (1950–2017) former president & CEO of Intel

Intel: "Intel Commits $1 Billion To Further Emerging Markets Strategy" https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2006/20060502corp.htm (2 May 2006)

People, Communication

“With new technologies of surveillance, economies of scale overcome problems of cost. Since all their electronic communications can be accessed, it is no longer necessary to segregate the inmates from one another. As there is no outside world, escape becomes unimaginable. Technological progress has brought into being a system of surveillance more far-reaching than any Bentham could have conceived. Enclosing the entire population in a virtual Panopticon might seem the ultimate invasion of freedom. But universal confinement need not be experienced as a privation. If they know nothing else, most are likely to accept it as normal. If the technology through which surveillance operates also provides continuous entertainment, they may soon find any other way of living intolerable.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

In the Puppet Theatre: A Universal Panopticon (p. 125)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

World, Way, Communication, Problem

“Only with these three kinds of creativity - technology, product planning, and marketing - can the public receive the benefit of a new technology.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Made in Japan (1986)

“My main problem with 64-bit binary is that it’s one extra compile to do every time you want to release binaries, so you have to maintain one build system for your 64-bit binary and then every time you have to make a build you have to make sure you get both the 32-bit and 64. Really honestly, there’s not any kind of significant performance increase. If you have good compatibility you’re able to run 32-bit binaries on a 64-bit machine, that’s the performance you get. If you run a 64-bit binary, it’s not going to make much difference. The technology is cool, but there’s really not that much point for doing it.”

Timothee Besset French software programmer

Quoted in Dustin Reyes, "Interview with id Software's Timothee Besset at QuakeCon 2006" http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/ttimo2006 LinuxGames (2006-08-07).

Problem, Time

“Rolling Stone: Nevertheless, you've often talked about how technology can empower people, how it can change their lives. Do you still have as much faith in technology today as you did when you started out 20 years ago?
Jobs: Oh, sure. It's not a faith in technology. It's faith in people.
Rolling Stone: Explain that.
Jobs: Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them. It's not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don't work. It's people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I'm still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s

People, Faith, Change

“I am a big believer that technology shapes mankind.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Quoted in 5 things you may not know about Mukesh Ambani, 15 October 2012, 17 December 2013, Profit NDTV http://profit.ndtv.com/news/people/article-5-things-you-may-not-know-about-mukesh-ambani-312075,

Quotes about technology page 2

Quotes about technology
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