Quotes About Innovation

Hal (for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, no less) was a masterwork of the third computer breakthrough.

I Remember Babylon First published in Playboy, March 1960 Collected in Tales of Ten Worlds This is one of the rare cases where I violated Sam Goldwyn's excellent rule: 'If you gotta message, use Western Union.' This story was a message, five years before the first commercial communications satellite was launched, warning of their possible danger. Apart from some minor political earthquakes, everything in it has since come true.

One day, perhaps, the human race would develop a new aesthetic; generations of artists might arise whose ideals were not based upon the natural forms of Earth molded by wind and water.

Magic is just science we haven't figured out yet

My father always said that you cannot graft a culture of science and engineering onto an Iron Age society. And so it's proving.' Bisesa studied him. 'You'll have to tell me about your father.

Arthur C. Clarke

Jede hinreichend fortschrittliche Technologie ist von Magie nicht zu unterscheiden

Nothing is deader than yesterday's science-fiction— and Verne belongs to the day before yesterday.

Men's minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photo-electric cells, and a cubic

Ignorance, disease, poverty, and fear had virtually ceased to exist.

Men's minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photo-electric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform.

Arthur C. Clarke

magnetostriction

Any fool could shuffle genes and most did.

Orice tehnologie suficient de avansat? nu poate fi deosebit? de magie.

You," said Stormgren, "have been reading too much science-fiction.

La vision, le goût, l'esprit visionnaire, l'invention véritable et le talent sont des qualités que peut aider, mais que ne remplacera jamais la plus intelligente des machines pensantes jamais conçues par l'homme.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them.

By mapping out possible futures, as well as a good many improbable ones, the science fiction writer does a great service to the community. He encourages in his readers flexibility of mind, readiness to accept and even welcome change—in one word, adaptability. Perhaps no attribute is more important in this age.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word newspaper, of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.)

But they knew in their hearts that once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization… Childhood's End - Ch. 15

Someone once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

When his type vanished, if it ever did, the world would be a safer but less interesting place.

By the late 50s, the Big Three of science fiction were Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein.