logo

Quotes About Obsolescence

When a machine begins to run without human aid, it is time to scrap it - whether it be a factory or a government.
~ Alexander Chase
Planned obsolescence isn't a new idea - God always used it with people.
~ Robert Orben
Very few fighters get the consideration of racehorses, which are put out to pasture to grow old with dignity and comfort when they haven't got it anymore.
~ Budd Schulberg
Education which is not modern share the fate of all organic things which are kept too long.
~ Alfred North Whitehead
He was thinking about automated teller machines. The term was aged and burdened by its own historical memory. It worked at cross-purposes, unable to escape the inferences of fuddled human personnel and jerky moving parts. The term was part of the process that the device was meant to replace. It was anti-futuristic, so cumbrous and mechanical that even the acronym seemed dated.
~ Don DeLillo
Change is the key that unlocks the door to growth and excitement in any organization. The leader's ability to inspire a culture of change can make or break their success. Tomorrow comes at us with lightning speed, and our competitive advantage is a fleeting thing. Bill Gates puts it this way: "In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.
~ Mac Anderson
Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence.
~ Brooks Stevens
What will make you great today will never make you great tomorrow! The airplane that Wilbur and Orville Wright invented in 1906 would be seen as a scrap today. It becomes valueless with time.
~ Israelmore Ayivor
To learn that a great book has gone out of print is to be reminded of our mortality, because something we have made an intimate part of our emotional selves has been declared, by the publishing world and the culture at large, to be obsolete.
~ Unknown
Basic technical training is, of course, useful. But to treat it as anything more than that is to lock students into technology that will be obsolete by the time they graduate. The time wasted will also deprive them of the basic training in knowledge and thinking that might help them adjust to the constant changes outside. (IV - From Managers and Speculators to Growth)
~ John Ralston Saul
We have an inglorious knack fo accumulating stuff....an economic model of mass production and planned obsolescence that continues to hold sway. Whether it's because fashions change or because products are manufactured to fail, we're primed to buy as often as possible. The psychology of advertising has optimized the selling of stuff to every demographic. Eighteen-month-old children have an average repertoire of two hundred brands they recognize before the first grade.
~ Unknown
Certain food-based biofuels like biodiesel have always been a bad idea. Others like corn ethanol have served a useful purpose and essentially are obsoleting themselves.
~ Vinod Khosla
The sumptuous age of stars and images is reduced to a few artificial tornado effects, pathetic fake buildings, and childish tricks which the crowd pretends to be taken in by to avoid feeling too disappointed. Ghost towns, ghost people. The whole place has the same air of obsolescence about it as Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard.
~ Jean Baudrillard
There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that.
~ Mignon McLaughlin
When the lifestyle of a social group becomes obsolete, when work turns into a boring routine and community responsibilities lose their meaning, it is likely that leisure will become increasingly more important. And if a society becomes too dependent on entertainment, it is likely that there will be less psychic energy left to cope creatively with the technological and economic challenges that will inevitably arise.
~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
everyone practices stupidity, including those of us who write about it; none of us is ever free of it, we are most seriously endangered when we think we are safe. That there is an almost infinite supply of stupidity, including our own, should provide educationists with a sense of humility and, incidentally, assurance that they will never become obsolete.
~ Neil Postman
Level-1 or world space is an anthropomorphically scaled, predominantly vision-configured, massively multi-slotted reality system that is obsolescing very rapidly. Garbage time is running out. Can what is playing you make it to level-2?
~ Unknown
What is new to modernity is a rate of the obsolescence of truth...
~ Unknown
The modern world seems invincible. Like the extinct dinosaurs.
~ Nicolás Gómez Dávila
In other words, in 1919 relatively few people could become disenchanted with liberal modernity because only a tiny minority had enjoyed the opportunity to become enchanted with it in the first place. Since then, however, billions more people have been exposed to the promises of individual freedom in a global neo-liberal economy that imposes constant improvisation and adjustment – and just as rapid obsolescence.
~ Pankaj Mishra
That's American know-how for you. It keeps coming at you, and every minute there's new junk to push out the old junk.
~ Paul Auster
People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
~ Peter Drucker