Quotes about technology
page 7

“While political and cultural factors are important as explanations for differences in national technology policy and industrial practices, emergent trends in science, engineering and management are leading to new paradigms for high-technology innovation in both Japan and the United States.”

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

Lewis M. Branscomb, Fumio Kodama (1993) Japanese innovation strategy: technical support for business visions

Science

“Having presented all the relevant nanoscale mechanisms, thus laying down a firm background for the readers’ understanding, the author moves to the topic of architectural challenges in Chapter 7. This field is claimed still to be an unsolved problem so the author gives examples of currently used technologies and points out potential architectural solutions such as self-assembly, carbon nanotubes, or quantum systems. That is why it makes the book even more valuable for those who intend to involve nanonetworks in their research.”

Stephen F Bush

Book Reviews, REVIEWER: JAKUB PALIDER, NANOSCALE COMMUNICATION NETWORKS STEPHEN F. BUSH, ARTECH HOUSE, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-1-60807-003-9, HARDCOVER, 308 PAGES, IEEE Communications Magazine, August 2011.

Books, Understanding, Problem

“The Entertainment Industry on Planet Earth had decided that in order to acquire Layer 7 Data Security, it was necessary to lock up layers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 so that no technological progress could occur without their permission. This was known by the IT Industry and the Consumer Electronics Industry on the planet to be offensive nonsense, but there was no counterweight to it, and there was no organised consumer dissent sufficient to require them to stand up for technical merit and their own right to run their own businesses without dictation from companies a tenth their size. Not surprisingly, since it is part of the role we play in this political power concentrated in poverty, humility, and sanctity, we brought them to a consensus they were unable to bring themselves to - which is represented in the license by a rule which fundamentally says "If you want to experiment with locking down layer below 7 in the pursuit of data networks inside businesses that keep the business's data at home, you may do so freely, we have no objection - not only do we have no objection to you doing it, we've no objection to your using our parts to do it with. But when you use our parts to build machines which control peoples' daily lives - which provide them with education and culture, build devices which are modifiable by them to the same extent that they're modifiable by you. That's all we want. If you can modify the device after you give it to them, then they must be able to modify the device after you give it to them - that's a price for using our parts. That's a deal which has been accepted.”

Eben Moglen (1959) American law professor and free software advocate

Talk titled The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3, Edinburgh, Scotland, June 26, 2007 http://www.archive.org/details/EbenMoglenLectureEdinburghJune2007text.

People, Education, Home, Business

“Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the heathen communists. Rather, capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing, at least in periods of accelerating technological change. The central committee of the Communist Party just could not deal with the rapidly changing world of the late twentieth century. When all data is accumulated in one secret bunker, and all important decisions are taken by a group of elderly apparatchiks, they can produce nuclear bombs by the cartload, but not an Apple or a Wikipedia.”

Yuval Noah Harari book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

God, War, Secret, World

“Literacy, the visual technology, dissolved the tribal magic by means of its stress on fragmentation and specialization and created the individual.”

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

1990s and beyond, "The Agenbite of Outwit" (1998)

“Contemporary feminists, who are generally poor or narrowly trained scholars, insist on viewing history as a weepy scenario of male oppression and female victimization. But it is more accurate to see men, driven by sexual anxiety away from their mothers, forming group alliances by male bonding to create complex structures of society, art, science and technology.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 23

Men, Art, History, Science

“Science should be distinguished from technique and its scientific instrumentation, technology. Science is practised by scientists, and techniques by ‘engineers’ — a term that in our terminology includes physicians, lawyers, and teachers. If for the scientist knowledge and cognition are primary, it is action and construction that characterises the work of the engineer, though in fact his activity may be based on science. In history, technique often preceded science.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Hans Freudenthal (1978). Weeding and Sowing. Preface to a Science of Mathematical Education; As cited in: Ben Wilbrink (2013) " Hans Freudenthal Aantekeningen bij zijn publicaties http://www.benwilbrink.nl/literature/freudenthal.htm".

History, Knowledge, Teachers, Science

“As new generations of activists come forward with new ideas and sensibilities; as the political landscape evolves and changes; as new technologies are born and developed; and as the mercurial focus of issues present new concerns and dangers… Our strength, creativity, harnessed rage and effective activism will remain constant and be the root source of our salvation in the future.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

Idea, Rage, Change, Future

“When software applications became larger and larger, people such as Shaw and Garlan coined the term software architecture. This notion of architecture deals with the key design principles underlying software artefacts. In the 1980s and 1990s, people became aware that the development of information technology (IT) should be done in conjunction with the development of the context in which it was used. This led to the identification of the so-called business/IT alignment problem. Solving the business/IT alignment problem requires enterprises to align human, organizational, informational, and technological aspects of systems. Quite early on, the term architecture was also introduced as a means to further alignment, and thus analyzes and solves business? IT alignment problems, Recently, the awareness emerged that alignment between business an IT is not enough, there are many more aspects in the enterprise in need of alignment. This has led to the use of the term architecture at the enterprise level: enterprise architecture.”

Erik Proper (1967) Dutch computer scientist

Martin Op 't Land, Erik Proper (2009) Enterprise Architecture: Creating Value by Informed Governance. p. 26-27

People, Business, Problem

“Stress, loneliness, depression, boredom- the madness of everyday life. Ever-greater levels of sadness, implying a recognition, on the visceral level at least, that things could be different. How much joy is there left in the technological society, this field of alienation and anxiety.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

"The Mass Psychology of Misery"
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

Life, Sadness, Joy, Loneliness

“Since Judaism made Christianity possible and gave it the character of a religion essentially free from magic, it rendered an important service from the point of view of economic history. For the dominance of magic outside the sphere in which Christianity has prevailed in one of the most serious obstructions to the rationalization of economic life. Magic involves a stereotyping of technology and economic relations. When attempts were made in China to inaugurate the building of railroads and factories a conflict with geomancy ensued … Similar is the relation to capitalism of the castes in India. Every new technical process which an Indian employs signifies for him first of all that he leaves his caste and falls into another, necessarily lower … An additional fact is that every caste makes every other caste impure. In consequence, workmen who dare not accept a vessel filled with water from each other's hands, cannot be employed together in the same factory room. Obviously, capitalism could not develop in an economic group thus bound hand and foot by magical means.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Max Weber, General Economic History, trans. by Frank Knight, 1961. p 265

Life, Religion, History, Water

“During his address to the 2003 International Association of Scientologists gala aboard the MV Freewinds, David Miscavige, the chair of the board of the Religious Technology Center, told the assembled glitterati about the "new civilization that only we can bring, the likes of which has never been before". That these claims may appear hyperbolic and hubristic to outsiders, has not been lost on Scientologists.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

Douglas E. Cowan, "Researching Scientology: Perceptions, Premises, Promises and Problematics", in – .
About

Appearance

“Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. (All that technology may say about ends is whether they are compatible with each other or realizable.)”

Karl Popper book The Poverty of Historicism

The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 22 The Unholy Alliance with Utopianism

“The masses in highly industrialized countries like England, the United States, or France are largely de-Christianized. Technology, and the way of life it produces, undermines Christianity far more effectively than do violent measures.”

Czeslaw Milosz book The Captive Mind

The Captive Mind (1953)

Life, Way, Country

“The advance in knowledge and useful new factors based on such knowledge are all too frequently put aside as if they were not produced means of production but instead simply happened to occur over time. This view is as a rule implicit in the notion of technological change.”

Theodore Schultz (1902–1998) American economist

Source: "Transforming traditional agriculture," 1964, p. 136

Knowledge, Change, Time

“Questions of convergence under an infinite time horizon will depend so much on epsilontic refinements in the system of assumptions — and on the infinite constancy of these refinements — that we are humanly speaking absolutely certain of getting infinite time horizon results which have no relevance to concrete reality. And in particular we are absolutely certain of getting irrelevant results if such epsilontic exercises are made under the assumption of a constant technology. 'In the long run we are all dead.' These words by Keynes ought to be engraved in marble and put on the desk of all epsilontologists, in growth theory under an infinite horizon.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Ragnar Frisch (1970) "Econometrics in the World of Today." University of Oslo, Institute of Economics, 1971; As quoted in Robert Johnston, Graham Clark. Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery. Pearson Education, 2005. p. 347
1970s and later

Exercises, Question, Reality, Time

“Dad used to say it’s [live recording] the backbone for any musical endeavour. And I’ve realised that with time. So most often, my re-recordings are live. Technology does enhance music, but the warmth of a live orchestra is incomparable. Fans wrote to me after ‘Oru Devadai…’ (“Vaamanan”) saying the score had a divine quality. That’s because it was done live. Besides, I’m also conscious of the employment problem that technology-driven music creates.”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Music, Problem, Time

“Technologies are control systems,” she said. “They dictate your reality.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 25 (p. 277).

Reality

“The combination of low culture and high technology is one of the most fascinating social features of the video game phenomenon. Computers were invented as super drones to do tasks no human in her or his right mind (much less left brain) would have the patience, or the perseverance, to manage. […] Now our robot drones, the ones designed to take all the boring jobs, become the instrument for libidinal extravaganzas devoid of any socially productive component. Video games are computers neutered of purpose, liberated from functionality. The idea is intoxicating; like playing with the help on their night off.”

Charles Bernstein (1950) American writer

"Play It Again, Pac-Man" http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.991/pop-cult.991, Postmodern Culture, vol. 2 no. 1 (September 1991)

Game, Idea, Help, Patience

“It is common to think of statistical graphics and data visualization as relatively modern developments in statistics. In fact, the graphic representation of quantitative information has deep roots. These roots reach into the histories of the earliest map-making and visual depiction, and later into thematic cartography, statistics and statistical graphics, medicine, and other fields. Along the way, developments in technologies (printing, reproduction) mathematical theory and practice, and empirical observation and recording, enabled the wider use of graphics and new advances in form and content.”

Michael Friendly (1945) American psychologist

Michael Friendly. " A brief history of data visualization http://www.datavis.ca/papers/hbook.pdf at datavis.ca, March 21, 2006.

Way, History, Mathematics, Thinking

“The transformation of the advanced countries to their present stage has been brought about by the acceptance of a scientiﬁc and rational view of life and nature. The scientiﬁc view has already permeated in a large measure the administrative organizations of the advanced countries. The scientiﬁc revolution, the social revolution and the industrial revolution are three aspects of the modernization of every society; these three aspects may be distinguished but cannot be separated. The rate of economic growth in every country is determined both directly and indirectly by the rate of progress of science and technology; directly through the utilization of the results of research and development, and indirectly through institutional changes brought about by the increasing inﬂuence of the scientiﬁc out-look and tradition.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

Life, Nature, Science, Change

“In our online descriptions and program literature we describe the cloisters as a public sphere for networked interaction, the gathering place for students, professors, and librarians engaged in planning, evaluating, or reviewing the efforts of research and study utilizing the whole range of technologies of literacy. We go further and describe the task of the cloisters as to "channel flows of research, learning and teaching between the increasingly networked world of the library and the intimacy and engagement of our classrooms and other campus spaces". There we continue to explore the "collectible object", which I tentatively described in Othermindedness in terms of maintaining an archive of "the successive choices, the errors and losses, of our own human community" and suggesting that what constitutes the collectible object is the value which suffuses our choices. It seemed to me then that electronic media are especially suited to tracking such "changing change".
I think it still seems so to me now but I do fear we have lost track of the beauty and nimbleness of new media in representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian, the ordinary mindfulness which makes human life possible and valuable.
It is interesting, I think, that recounting and rehearsing this notion leaves this interview layered and speckled with (self) quotations, documentations, implicit genealogies, images, and traditions of continuity, change, and difference. Perhaps the most quoted line of afternoon over the years has been the sentence "There is no simple way to say this."”

Michael Joyce (1945) American academic and writer

The same is true of any attempt to describe the way in which the collectible object participates in (I use this word as a felicitous shorthand for the complex of ideas involved in what I called "representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian" above) the library as living archive. An interview with Michael Joyce and review of Liam’s Going at Trace Online Writing Centre Archive (2 December 2002) http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/review/index.cfm?article=33

Life, World, Fear, Beauty

“Organizations that operate under an IT monarchy place key business unit and technical decisions in the hands of the CIO. Under the duopoly method, decision-making for IT budgets, applications and technologies is shared among the CIO and business unit leaders.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Attributed to Peter Weill and Jeanne Ross in: Thomass Hoffman (2006) "Taming IT in the World Life Fund" in Computerworld Vol. 40 (33), August 14, 2006. p. 39

Business, Decision

“There is no technological magic bullet that will make the government as smart as it is powerful.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave, 2003) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigrams%20page%20Terrorism%20&%20Tyranny.htm

“The nature of technology depends very much upon what the public can be induced to put up with.”

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Source: Economic Heresies (1971), Chapter VIII, Growth Models, p. 140

Nature, Dependency

“Technology is dangerous.”
“How do you mean?”
“It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 26 (p. 242)

“While technology has helped us be more efficient when elections are run, those same elections should be secure and auditable. Many county clerks would like to put printable receipts on their electronic voting machines, but they do not have the funding. These print-outs would provide the voter and the county a paper trail in case of close recounts. This will help eliminate voter fraud.”

Rupert Boneham (1964) American mentor, television personality, and politician

Rupert on the Issues (2011)

Fraud, Help

“No matter how close and familiar the temple or cathedral were to the people who lived around them, they remained in terrifying or elevating contrast to the daily life of the slave, the peasant, and the artisan—and perhaps even to that of their masters. Whether ritualized or not, art contains the rationality of negation. In its advanced positions, it is the Great Refusal—the protest against that which is. The modes in which man and things are made to appear, to sing and sound and speak, are modes of refuting, breaking, and recreating their factual existence. But these modes of negation pay tribute to the antagonistic society to which they are linked. Separated from the sphere of labor where society reproduces itself and its misery, the world of art which they create remains, with all its truth, a privilege and an illusion. In this form it continues, in spite of all democratization and popularization, through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The “high culture” in which this alienation is celebrated has its own rites and its own style. The salon, the concert, opera. theater are designed to create and invoke another dimension of reality. Their attendance requires festive-like preparation; they cut off and transcend everyday experience. Now this essential gap between the arts and the order of the day, kept open in the artistic alienation, is progressively closed by the advancing technological society. And with its closing, the Great Refusal is in turn refused; the “other dimension” is absorbed into the prevailing state of affairs. The works of alienation are themselves incorporated into this society and circulate as part and parcel of the equipment which adorns and psychoanalyzes the prevailing state of affairs.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 63-64

Life, People, Truth, World

“Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently advanced.”

Gregory Benford book Foundation's Fear

This is derived from the third of Arthur C. Clarke's three laws : "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." There are other variants which had inverted this including one known as Gehm's corollary http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/cyc/l/law.htm, published several years earlier : "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." The earliest variant seems to be "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." It has been called "Niven's Law" and attributed to Larry Niven by some, and to Terry Pratchett by others, but without any citation of an original source in either case — the earliest occurrence yet located is an anonymous one in Keystone Folklore (1984) by the Pennsylvania Folklore Society. Foundation's Fear (1997)

Appearance

“One of the issues that I discussed with (Sri Lankan Foreign) Minister (Mangala) Samaraweera was the importance of information technology for the development of both our countries [referring to India and Sri Lanka], and to take advantage of the opportunities that the new digital world offers”

Sushma Swaraj (1952–2019) Indian politician

Quoted on BGR (February 7, 2016), "India ready to offer assistance to Sri Lanka in IT sector: Sushma Swaraj" http://www.bgr.in/news/india-ready-to-offere-assistance-to-sri-lanka-in-it-sector-sushma-swaraj/

World, Country

“Man has created a grandiose world of technology, of which dread and fear are often the result… Fortunately, events in the world and our way of life are not determined by technology alone.”

Karel Zeman (1910–1989) Czech film director, artist and animator

Člověk si vytvořil grandiózní svět techniky, z kterého jde často hrůza a strach... Naštěstí to není jen technika, která určuje dění světa a způsob života. Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/en/karel-zeman/quotes and Czech http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/cz/karel-zeman/citaty).

Life, World, Fear, Way

“No one forced me to focus on technology. I just did it because I had a passion for it. When I started, there weren’t a lot of women role models. It was Carol Bartz, Judy Estrin. I think there’s been a lot of progress since then, and I think that if women have a passion and really want to succeed, they can. On a relative basis, the male-female ratio is certainly skewed to men, but on an absolute basis, there are a lot of very successful women in technology.”

Mary Meeker (1959) American venture capitalist and securities analyst

Interview with Wired: "The Indomitable Mary Meeker" https://www.wired.com/2012/09/mf-mary-meeker/ (21 September 2012)

Women, Men, Thinking, Passion

“While numerous studies have dealt with the nature of organization-environment relations, the first major attempt to identify the types of organizational structure and managerial practice that are appropriate for different environmental conditions was conducted by Burns and Stalker, who studied twenty manufacturing firms in England and Scotland. Of these, fifteen were in the electronics industry, four were in research and development, and one was a major manufacturer. The particular environmental conditions examined were the rates of change in the scientific technology and the relevant product markets of the firms being studied.”

Arthur G. Bedeian (1946) American business theorist

1984; 190
Organizations: Theory and Analysis, 1984

Nature, Study, Change

“An ecological approach to public administration builds, then, quite literally from the ground up; from the elements of a place — soils, climate, location, for example — to the people who live there — their numbers and ages and knowledge, and the ways of physical and social technology by which from the place and in relationships with one another, they get their living. It is within this setting that their instruments and practices of public housekeeping should be studied so that they may better understand what they are doing, and appraise reasonably how they are doing it. Such an approach is of particular interest to us as students seeking to co-operate in our studies; for it invites — indeed is dependent upon — careful observation by many people in different environments of the roots of government functions, civic attitudes, and operating problems.”

John M. Gaus (1894–1969) American political scientist

Source: Reflections on public administration, 1947, p. 8-9

People, Age, Way, Understanding

“You could make a good case that the history of social life is about the history of the technology of memory. That social order and control, structure of governance, social cohesion in states or organizations larger than face-to- face society depends on the nature of the technology of memory--both how it works and what it remembers… In short, what societies value is what they memorize, and how they memorize it, and who has access to its memorized form determines the structure of power that the society represents and acts from.”

Eben Moglen (1959) American law professor and free software advocate

Talk titled "Freedom Business" @ The O'Reilly Media MySQL Conference, 2007-04-25 http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1897.html.

Life, History, Nature, Memory

“In the period 1965 - 69, the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency employed a group of about ten young game theorists as consultants. It was as a member of this group that I developed the simpler approach, already mentioned, to the analysis of I-games.
I realized that a major problem in arms control negotiations is the fact that each side is relatively well informed about its own position with respect to various variables relevant to arms control negotiations, such as its own policy objectives, its peaceful or bellicose attitudes toward the other side, its military strength, its own ability to introduce new military technologies, and so on - but may be rather poorly informed about the other side's position in terms of such variables.
I came to the conclusion that finding a suitable mathematical representation for this particular problem may very well be a crucial key to a better theory of arms control negotiations, and indeed to a better theory of all I-games.”

John Harsanyi (1920–2000) hungarian economist

Source: "Games with Incomplete Information," 1997, p. 138

Peace, Game, Mathematics, Problem

“A new way of seeing and a new politics is arising already in bits and pieces, here and there, across the continent. … The new politics is arising out of the work and ideas of many of the people in many of the social movements of the 1970's: the spiritual, environmental, feminist, and "men's liberation" movements; the human potential, simple living, appropriate-technology, and business-for-learning-and-pleasure movements; the humanistic-transformational education movement and the new nonviolent-action movement. … Each of these movements … has something to add to the new politics. Their contributions come together like the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 5.
New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978)

Men, People, Pleasure, Education

“Never before have people been so infantalized, made so dependent on the machine for everything; as the earth rapidly approaches its extinction due to technology, our souls are shrunk and flattened by its pervasive rule. Any sense of wholeness and freedom can only return by the undoing of the massive division of labour at the heart of technological progress. This is the liberatory project in all its depth.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

People, Soul, Sense, Freedom

“When we represent technology to ourselves through its own common sense we think of ourselves as picking and choosing in a supermarket, rather than within the analogy of the package deal. We have bought a package deal of far more fundamental novelness than simply a set of instruments under our control. It is a destiny which enfolds us in its own conceptions of instrumentality, neutrality and purposiveness.”

George Grant (1918–1988) Canadian philosopher

Technology and Justice (Notre Dame: 1986), p. 32

Thinking, Sense

“The liberating force of technology—the instrumentalization of things—turns into … the instrumentalization of man.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 159

“Arisen online and beyond is a niche-market of nudniks (nags): Women talking, blogging, vlogging, writing and publishing about women in high-technology or their absence therefrom; women beating the tom-tom about discrimination and stereotyping, but saying absolutely nothing about the technology they presumably love and help create.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" James Damore Confronts The Hags of High-Tech (& Loses) https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2017/08/12/james-damore-confronts-the-nagging-harridans-of-hightech--loses-n2367635," Townhall.com, August 12, 2017. 2010s, 2017

Love, Women, Help

“Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 103

Life, Children, World, Family

“In the south west of India lies the long narrow coastal state of Kerala. Most of its thirty-two million inhabitants live off the land and the ocean, a rich tropical ecosystem watered by two monsoons a year. It's also one of India's most crowded states - but the population is stable because nearly everybody has small families… At the root of it all is education. Thanks to a long tradition of compulsory schooling for boys and girls Kerala has one of the highest literacy rates in the World. Where women are well educated they tend to choose to have smaller families… What Kerala shows is that you don't need aggressive policies or government incentives for birthrates to fall. Everywhere in the world where women have access to education and have the freedom to run their own lives, on the whole they and their partners have been choosing to have smaller families than their parents. But reducing birthrates is very difficult to achieve without a simple piece of medical technology, contraception. m35s09-m38s21”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

Women, World, Education, School

“Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 3 (p. 19)

Democracy

“Mankind cannot, I submit, save itself from destruction through mere cleverness of scientific technology selfishly applied, nor through wishful thinking. But through a deep sense of brotherhood of all life, and a willingness and eagerness on the part of each and every person to work constructively for the preservation and enhancement of life, mankind may yet be preserved and go forward into the next millennium with confidence, competence and compassion.”

H. Jay Dinshah (1933–2000) American proponent of veganism and Jain ethics

The Vegetarian Way, Proceedings of the 24th World Vegetarian Conference (India, 1977); as quoted in Jon Wynne-Tyson, The Extended Circle (1985), and in the International Vegetarian Union website https://ivu.org/congress/wvc77/extracts.html.

Life, Confidence, Thinking, Sense

“The measurement of time was the first example of a scientific discovery changing the technology.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 8, The End of Nature, p. 150.

Change, Time

“Have full-blown contact now. [The ongoing contacts] have been well documented here with multiple eyewitnesses as well as day and night footage with sound of the ships. Can provide all the eyewitnesses you wish. Two days ago I was hit with three balls of light within a stream of energy, after which a woman appeared to me with a strange headdress used for communication and other higher consciousness and energy works. The ship came in as a golden light from the north. It dropped down low and hovered. I have been [burnt] on my chest right over the heart. It has been photographed. These beings are extremely spiritual and technologically advanced. They have a message. This is not airy fairy, this is for real.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

James describing one of his close encounters.
Source: Montgomery, Christopher (2000), "Washington State UFO Hot Spot", UFO Magazine 15 (3): 36

Communication, Light, Appearance, Heart

“The question now is whether people are prepared or not to realize that they are dominated by technology. And to realize that technology oppresses them, forces them to undertake certain obligations and conditions them. Their freedom begins when they become conscious of these things. For when we become conscious of that which determines our life we attain the highest degree of freedom.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

The Betrayal by Technology (1993 film)

Life, People, Question, Freedom

“The technological concepts of Technocracy are completely beyond any of the political and social philosophies, from Adam Smith, Ricardo, Proudhon, Bakunin, Karl Marx, Lenin and various other promulgators of rightist and leftist political philosophies.”

Howard Scott (1890–1970) American engineer

Source: History and Purpose of Technocracy, 1965, p. 23

“At the level of firms, therefore, only those whose cultural repertoire gives them transactional capacity throughout the I-Space can summon and adequate learning response to any emerging gaps between technology and culture. Those operating from too narrow a cultural base in the space, however, must of necessity lose control of the SLC unless they can complement their limited cultural repertoire through carefully selected interfirm and intercultural collaborations – i. e. through an externalization of transactions that link them with agents located elsewhere in the space. However, they will then confront the same problems of integration that more culturally diverse firms encounter inside their organization when trying to coordinate the activities of different functions or businesses. There is no cheap grace.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 151; As cited in: Ortiz et al. (2006)

Business, Problem, Learning

“For too long, African societies have been identified as superstitious, consisting of people who cannot question, reason or think critically. Dogma and blind faith in superstition, divinity and tradition are said to be the mainstay of popular thought and culture. African science is often equated with witchcraft and the occult; African philosophy with magical thinking, myth-making and mysticism, African religion with stone-age spiritual abracadabra, African medicine with folk therapies often involving pseudoscientific concoctions inspired by magical thinking. Science, critical thinking and technological intelligence are portrayed as Western — as opposed to universal — values, and as alien to Africa and to the African mindset. An African who thinks critically or seeks evidence and demands proofs for extraordinary claims is accused of taking a “white” or Western approach. An African questioning local superstitions and traditions is portrayed as having abandoned or betrayed the essence of African identity. Skepticism and rationalism are regarded as Western, un-African, philosophies. Although there is a risk of overgeneralizing, there are clear indicators that the continent is still socially, politically and culturally trapped by undue credulity. Many irrational beliefs exist and hold sway across the region. These are beliefs informed by fear and ignorance, misrepresentations of nature and how nature works. These misconceptions are often instrumental in causing many absurd incidents, harmful traditional practices and atrocious acts.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

A Manifesto for a Skeptical Africa (2012)

People, Age, Fear, Faith

“Don’t overestimate your familiarity with technologies you barely understand. It could be your undoing.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 30 (p. 565)

Understanding

“…we know instantly whenever anyone touches our data—and who touched it. That’s the best one can hope for in a technologically advanced society.”

Daniel Suarez book Freedom™

Source: Freedom™ (2010), Chapter 5: Getting with the Program, Character: Laney Price

Hope

“A key characteristic of the engineering culture is that the individual engineer’s commitment is to technical challenge rather than to a given company. There is no intrinsic loyalty to an employer as such. An employer is good only for providing the sandbox in which to play. If there is no challenge or if resources fail to be provided, the engineer will seek employment elsewhere. In the engineering culture, people, organization, and bureaucracy are constraints to be overcome. In the ideal organization everything is automated so that people cannot screw it up. There is a joke that says it all. A plant is being managed by one man and one dog. It is the job of the man to feed the dog, and it is the job of the dog to keep the man from touching the equipment. Or, as two Boeing engineers were overheard to say during a landing at Seattle, “What a waste it is to have those people in the cockpit when the plane could land itself perfectly well.” Just as there is no loyalty to an employer, there is no loyalty to the customer. As we will see later, if trade-offs had to be made between building the next generation of “fun” computers and meeting the needs of “dumb” customers who wanted turnkey products, the engineers at DEC always opted for technological advancement and paid attention only to those customers who provided a technical challenge.”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Edgar H. Schein (2010). Dec Is Dead, Long Live Dec: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equiment Corporation. p. 60

People, Dogs, Loyalty

“The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge — not even in the long run.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

"Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary," from Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions (2004)

War, Knowledge, Freedom, Suffering

“New York has been, and will continue to be, a magnet for people from all over the world. This is where the arts, business, research and technology converge to create the world's foremost urban economy.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/job_creation/mayor_michael_bloombergs_inaugural_speech
New York City

People, World, Art, Business

“Listen to the technology; find out what it's telling you.”

Carver Mead (1934) American computer scientist

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/weekinreview/31lohr.html?_r=1

“Each new technology is a reprogramming of sensory life.”

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

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 33

Life

“Technology has become our culture, our culture technology.”

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)

“The power of the United States depended heavily on its pale empire of ideas, attitudes and innovations. Its ideas alighted effortlessly on foreign ground, irrespective of who owned the ground. Much of its influence came from such innovations as the telephone, electricity, aircraft and the cheap car, nuclear weapons and spacecraft, computers and the Internet. Its influence came through jazz, cartoons, Hollywood, television and popular culture. Its influence came from an excitement about technology and economic change, and a belief in incentives and individual enterprise. It was also the most ardent missionary for the creed of democracy. While military and economic might was vital to the success of the United States, the power of its pale empire of ideas was probably even more pervasive.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of the World

A Short History of the World (2000)

Cars, Democracy, Idea, Change

“"Technocracy," in The Meaning of Technology. Selected Readings from American Sources (2004) ed. Montserrat Ginés Giber”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Variant: "Technocracy," in The Meaning of Technology. Selected Readings from American Sources (2004) ed. Montserrat Ginés Giber

Reading

“Science that abdicates its cultural values risks being perceived as an extension of technology, an instrument in the hands of political or economic power. Humanity that disavows science risks falling into the hands of superstition.”

Nicola Cabibbo (1935–2010) Italian physicist

Address to the Holy Father, in The cultural values of science, The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Scripta Varia 105 (8-11 November 2002), page xiv http://www.vatican.edu/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/archivio/s.v.105_cultural_values/part1.pdf

Science

“Notice that there is no sociology in the book. Scientific communities and their practices are, however, at its core, entering with paradigms, as we saw, at page 10 and continuing to the final page of the book. There had been sociology of scientific knowledge before Kuhn, but after Structure it burgeoned, leading to what is now called science studies. This is a self-generating field (with, of course, its own journals and societies) that includes some work in the history and the philosophy of sciences and technology, but whose emphasis is on sociological approaches of various kinds, some observational, some theoretical. Much, and perhaps most, of the really original thinking about the sciences after Kuhn has had a sociological bent.
Kuhn was hostile to these developments. In the opinion of many younger workers, that is regrettable. Let us put it down to dissatisfaction with growing pains of the field, rather than venturing into tedious metaphors about fathers and sons. One of Kuhn’s marvelous legacies is science studies as we know it today.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking (2012), Introductory Essay, in 50th anniversary edition of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution

Pain, Hostility, Books, History

“Technological consciousness takes itself dead seriously; it has no sense of humor. The fool can play no role in it, for there is no other realm that is can see beyond itself to which the fool can point. Consciousness in the throes of desire cannot tolerate laughter any more than criticism of laughter can be tolerated in a moment of sexual lust.”

Donald Phillip Verene (1937) philosopher

Source: Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge (1997), p. 169

Fools, Sense, Laughter, Dead

“When I did "Unwrapped" -- that's one of my favorite albums I've ever done in my life -- I love it when someone listens to the whole album. But I would rather them be able to buy some songs that they like, [rather] than not buy the album at all.... You can't fight technology. You can't fight, you know, the consumer.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

thestrippodcast.com (September 9, 2006)
2007, 2008

Love, Life, Fight

“This new generation of networked people understand they are living through a third industrial revolution, but they are coming to realize why it has stalled: with the credit system broken, capitalism cannot sustain the scale of automation that is possible, and the destruction of jobs implied by the new technologies.”

Paul Mason (journalist) book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future

PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015)

People, Understanding

“Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature)… said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched… said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U. S. S. R… professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you"… used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars… used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war… allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling.".. sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck… then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too… then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.) One could go on… This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2004

Death, War, People, World

“We now live in a technologically prepared environment that blankets the earth itself. The humanly contrived environment of electric information and power has begun to take precedence over the old environment of "nature." Nature, as it were, begins to be the content of our technology.”

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

Source: 1990s and beyond, A McLuhan Sourcebook (1995), p. 276

Nature

“I will assert that U. S. economic growth is in lockstep with science and technology and, by extension, science education.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, J.D. Velasco, Study: California's elementary schools barely teach science, The Whittier Daily News, California, October 25, 2011]

Education, Science

“The rate of change in the business world is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up over the next few decades. Enterprises everywhere will be presented with even more terrible hazards and wonderful opportunities, driven by the globalization of the economy along with related technological and social trends”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Source: The Heart of Change, (2002), p. 130 (in 21013 edition)

World, Business, Change, Speed

“Mexico is such an important problem. The Mexican government's policies are pushing migration north… There isn't any sensible approach except to do what we need to do simultaneously. Secure our border — with technology, personnel, physical barriers if necessary in some places. We need to have tough employer sanctions, incentivize Mexico to do more.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Council on Foreign Relations speech in 2006 ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uXJ1mgkyF0), quoted in "Hillary Clinton In 2006: ‘Secure Our Border With… Physical Barriers’" http://www.westernjournalism.com/hillary-clinton-in-2006-secure-our-border-with-physical-barriers/ by Gerry Urbanek, Western Journalism (10 June 2016). Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

Problem

“Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

The Objectivist February 1971

Life, Death, Nature

“In my opinion, libraries and librarians are needed more than ever, and the literature is noting this more often. In the development of MARC, it was clear to me that we needed two talents, i. e., computer expertise and library expertise. Neither talent could have succeeded alone. We need this more than ever today. Librarians must become computer literate so that they can understand the relationship between the technology applied and the discipline of their profession.”

Henriette Avram (1919–2006) American computer programmer and system analyst. She developed the MARC formatting used in libraries

Source: They Won! And did it ALA’s Way, 1997, p.77

Literature, Understanding

“When that happens, and the “World’s Sole Remaining Superpower” loses its early-adopter advantage, drone technology will work to the advantage of the side with the most decentralized, distributed organizational infrastructure, and the most widely dispersed and hardened end-points. And it will disproportionately hurt the side with the most centralized, hierarchical form of organization and the most concentrated target profile. Anyone want to venture a guess as to which respective sides fit those descriptions? Imagine, if you will, a world in which drones are cheap and widely available. Then stop and think about the target profile of the Empire and the corporate interests it serves. Imagine how easy it would be to get targeting information on the homes, churches and country clubs of the senior management and directors of the aerospace companies that make American drones. The Boardrooms and C-Suites themselves. The factories. The whole South Asian chain of command, from CINC CENTCOM down to battalion and flight headquarters. The logistical tail of the drones, including the control centers at every airbase from which drones are staged. Begin to get the picture?”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Bring on the Drones! (2013)
Other Writing

World, Home, Imagination, Thinking

“My father was in the wholesale tea, coffee, and cigar business, with a firm called Bennett-Sloan and Company. In 1885 he moved the business to New York City, on West Broadway, and from the age of ten I grew up in Brooklyn. I am told I still have the accent. My father's father was a schoolteacher. My mother's father was a Methodist minister. My parents had five children, of whom I am the oldest. There is my sister, Mrs. Katharine Sloan Pratt, now a widow. There are my three brothers — Clifford, who was in the advertising business; Harold, a college professor; and Raymond, the youngest, who is a professor, writer, and expert on hospital administration. I think we have all had in common a capability for being dedicated to our respective interests.
I came of age at almost exactly the time when the automobile business in the United States came into being. In 1895 the Duryeas, who had been experimenting with motor cars, started what I believe was the first gasoline-automobile manufacturing company in the United States. In the same year I left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a a BS. in electrical engineering, and went to work for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company of Newark, later of Harrison, New Jersey. The Hyatt antifriction bearing was later to become a component of the automobile, and it was through this component that I came into the automotive industry. Except for one early and brief departure from it, I have spent my life in the industry.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 37

Life, Children, Age, Cars

“Science has been the absolute bedrock of technological and economic progress in the United States.”

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

Branscomb (2012) in: " Scientist Lewis M. Branscomb Gives $1 Million Gift to Found New Center for Science and Democracy at UCS http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/scientist-lewis-branscomb-center-science-democracy-ucs-1385.html" at ucsusa.org/news, April 30, 2012

Science

“Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

Wired Issue 2.09 (September 1994) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/penn.html 1990s

Art, Parting

“The only constant in the technology industry is change.”

Marc Benioff (1964) American businessman

Forbes: Marc Benioff to Write Age of Context Foreword https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelisrael/2013/03/18/marc-benioff-to-write-age-of-context-foreword/ (18 March 2013)

Change

“We are socialists because we believe we live now in a world that requires a great deal of thoughtful planning ahead of time. We are socialists because we live in a world that is peculiarly interdependent, and to a degree quite unknown in earlier times. […] We are socialists because we believe in this kind of world - in this anarchy of nations - we need to have a concept that the great purpose of life is to manage our extraordinary scientific and technological achievements and our resources for the common good. It’s not easy and it cannot be the byproduct of a game where everybody seeks the maximum profit for himself, either men or nations in that role.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961

Life, Men, World, Game

“You know, if I would have understood the potential of… doing, or adapting comic book characters to feature films, and also the tie-in to gaming and digital technology, when I was doing the first Blade films, then I’d be in a different business right now. I’d be in a whole different ball game.”

Wesley Snipes (1962) film actor, Martial artist, film producer

Wesley Snipes, Wesley Snipes interview: 'Robert Downey Jr called me for advice about Iron Man' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/11016602/Wesley-Snipes-interview-Robert-Downey-Jr-called-me-for-advice-about-Iron-Man.html, Daily Telegraph, 9 August 2014

Books, Game, Business

“The driving force in the world economy is fast becoming a global confederation of productive vanguards. The vanguards established in different parts of the world drive one another forward. They trade with one another. They transfer personnel, technology, and organizational practices among themselves. Above all, they emulate one another.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Democracy Realizedː The Progressive Alternative (1998), p. 32

World, Parting

“The members of this Elite are either direct incarnations of the fourth-dimensional Prison Warders or have their minds controlled by them. The aim of the Brotherhood and its interdimensional controllers has been to centralise power in the hands of the few. This process is now very advanced and it is happening on a global scale today thanks to modern technology. The game-plan is known as the Great Work of Ages or the New World Order, and it presently seeks to introduce a world government to which all nations would be colonies; a world central bank and currency; a world army; and a micro-chipped population connected to a global computer. What is happening today is the culmination of the manipulation which has been unfolding for thousands of years.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

ibid

Age, World, Game

“Tracking the individual learning curves of the major technologies that comprise the infrastructure of information technology provides a more detailed account of the present and future state-of-the art of the technologies underlying convergence. The base technologies of digital electronics, general-purpose computer architectures, software and interaction are mature and provide solid foundations for computer science. The upper technologies of knowledge representation and acquisition, autonomy and sociality, support product innovation and provide the beginnings of foundations for knowledge science. Well's dream of a world brain making available all of human knowledge is well on its way to realization and it is in the representation, acquisition, and access and effective application of that knowledge that the commercial potential and socio-economic impact of convergence lies.”

Brian R. Gaines (1938) British computer scientist

Last paragraph
Convergence to the Information Highway (1996)

World, Dreams, Art, Way

“The question that no-one ever asks in the Pokemon world is why that long-dead illustrious and ethical human being, having created the technology to store big things in very small things, decided to use this gimmick the way he did - storing potentially deadly ferocious animals with magic powers in a little thingy that you can hang off your belt. Because he wanted the power, that's why. He wanted to know the ecstasy of holding five deadly creatures round his waist. He probably got off on that sort of thing, the sick weirdo.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Why it would kick arse to be a Pokemon trainer http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/essays/pokemon.htm Fully Ramblomatic, Essays

World, Way, Question, Animals

“Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge. There is strong evidence showing that companies entering these emerging markets early have significant first-mover advantages over later entrants.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

Source: 1990s, The Innovator's Dilemma (1997), p. 3; cited in: Parminder Bhachu (2004), Dangerous Designs: Asian Women Fashion, the Diaspora Economies. p. 172

Strong

“All the brands and flavors of Big Salvation. At the last minute we would devise a technological fix and save ourselves. Or: the Hypotheticals were benevolent beings who would turn the planet into a peaceable kingdom. Or: God would rescue us all, or at least the true believers among us. Or. Or. Or.
Big Salvation. It was a honeyed lie. A paper lifeboat, even if we were killing ourselves trying to cling to it. It wasn’t the Spin that had mutilated my generation. It was the lure and price of Big Salvation.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Spin

Source: Spin (2005), p. 340

God, Lie

“If the molecular evidence is correct… almost five million years passed between the time our ancestors became bipedal and the time when they started making stone tools. Whatever the evolutionary force that produced a bipedal ape, it was not linked with the ability to make and use tools. However, many anthropologists believe that the advent of technology 2.5 million years ago did coincide with the beginnings of brain expansion.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

The Origin of Humankind (1994)

Time

“We've deployed thousands of National Guard members to assist the Border Patrol. We've upgraded technology at our borders. We've added infrastructure, including new fencing and vehicle barriers. We're adding thousands of new beds in our detention facilities so we can continue working to end catch and release] at our southern border. During the course of my administration we have apprehended and sent home more 6 million people entering our country illegally. And I thank the Border Patrol for their hard work. The Secure Fence Act builds on this progress. The bill authorizes the construction of hundreds of miles of additional fencing along our southern border.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2004, Signing of Secure Fence Act of 2006

People, Home, Country

“Business System Planning (BSP) and Business Information Control Study (BICS) are two information system planning study methodologies that specifically employ enterprise analysis techniques in the course of their analysis. Underlying the BSP and BICS analysis are the data management problems that result from systems design approaches that optimize the management of technology at the expense of managing the data.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Business Systems Planning and Business Information Control Study: A comparison, 1982, p. 31

Optimism, Business, Problem, Study

“Systems analysis, conceived in a policy sciences framework, is the macro instrument of the systems manager for understanding, evaluating and improving human systems — which are defined as goal oriented interdependent units incorporating people, organization and some form of technology for control, administration or output.”

Richard F. Ericson (1919–1993) American academic

Richard F. Ericson (1979) Improving the human condition: quality and stability in social systems : proceedings of the Silver Anniversary International Meeting, London, England, August 20-24, 1979. Society for General Systems Research. p. 621

People, Understanding, Science

“The trends in modem technology reveal most clearly the contrasting modes of development in thinking about the future. Technology offers an unprecedented confirmation of the possibilities of the utopia, often far exceeding the utopian fantasies in its concrete achievements. Through technology, Homo sapiens can transform ail things; at last man appears to be master of his own fate.”

Fred Polak (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 142

Fate, Thinking, Appearance, Future

“With the technology, we’ve become more apathetic, because we don’t look in each other’s eyes any more as we attempt communication. But at the same time, with one iPhone, we can start a revolution. If there’s injustice, you just film it and post it. And suddenly people are tapped into a current event they wouldn’t otherwise see, and that’s incredible.”

Laura Dern (1967) American actress, director, producer

Comparing the pros and cons of the advancing technology, as quoted in Chet Cooper interview with Laura Dern, Chet Cooper, Ability Magazine (February/March 2015) https://abilitymagazine.com/laura-dern.html

People, Communication, Time

“Microkernels are not a pipe dream. They represent proven technology.”

Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1944) Dutch computer scientist

In a Usenet message, 5 Feb 1992.
The "Linux is Obsolete" Debate

Dreams

“In its whole sweep, therefore, information work includes: science, that helps us to understand our problems; technology, that helps us to solve them; and the art of participating in each delicate interpersonal communication into which we are invited. The fusion of these three aspects of the craft creates a “triple glow” of optimal service.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Systems (1973), p. 330.

Art, Communication, Optimism, Understanding

“Technological change is beneficial only when other jobs replace the ones lost.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Guardian Weekly, August 08, 1993

Change

“None of the widely touted new technologies and weapons systems "would have helped me in the last three years [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. But I could have used cultural training [and] language training. I could have used more products from American universities [who] understood the world does not revolve around America and [who] embrace coalitions and allies for all of the strengths that they bring us."”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

Speaking at a professional conference on military transformation, urging the Pentagon to invest in efforts that would "diminish the conditions that drive people to sign up for these kinds of insurgencies." Breaking the Warrior Code (February 2005) http://spectator.org/archives/2005/02/11/breaking-the-warrior-code

World, Universe, Help, Training