Quotes About Technology

The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.

In all the known history of Mankind, advances have been made primarily in physical technology; in the capacity of handling the inanimate world about Man. Control of self and society has been left to to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result no culture of greater stability than about fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery.

The colonization of space is the only possible salvation of Earth.

I suppose there's no way of putting the mushroom cloud back into that nice, shiny uranium sphere.

Lamentarsi è una caratteristica innata della specie umana. Nel Secolo del Carbone la gente imprecava contro la macchina a vapore; in una commedia di Shakespeare un personaggio lamenta l'invenzione della polvere da sparo. Mille anni dopo ci si lamentava per la fabbricazione del cervello positronico.

Space, man, have you no respect for science?

After all, all devices have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication—and lies. The discovery of fire introduced cooking—and arson. The discovery of the compass improved navigation—and destroyed civilizations in Mexico and Peru. The automobile is marvelously useful—and kills Americans by the tens of thousands each year. Medical advances have saved lives by the millions—and intensified the population explosion.

The word "robot" is from a Czech word meaning "compulsory labor.

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Zeroth Law...

Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech—and both are still dangerous to this day—but human beings would not be human without them.

The machines do not solve problems with greater insight than men do, only faster. Only faster!

When one's home has a really excellent computer capable of reaching other computers anywhere in the Galaxy, one scarcely needs to budge, you know.

A robot must not hurt a human being, unless he can think of a way to prove it is for the human being's ultimate good after all.

Logical but not reasonable. Wasn't that the definition of a robot?

In short, the age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate. Now that is gone, and the youngsters have their glazed eyes fixed on the television tube. The result is clear. True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily dumbing down.

A nuclear blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

There was no doubt about it: the City was the culmination of man's mastery over the environment. Not space travel, not the fifty colonized worlds that were now so haughtily independent, but the City.

You are a military man and should know better. If there is one science into which man has probed continuously and successfully, it is that of military technology. No potential weapon would remain unrealized for ten thousand years.

All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty billions.

He threw his cigar away and looked up at the outstretched Galaxy. "Back to oil and coal, are they?" he murmured—and what the rest of his thoughts were he kept to himself.

The day of the week on which the tour took place was known to all workers. All devices in its path ought to have been carefully neutralized or locked, since it was unreasonable to expect human beings to withstand the temptation to handle knobs, keys, handles and pushbuttons.

When they sat down at a small table and punched in their orders

Golan, spuse Pelorat, am impresia ca progresul civilizatiei nu reprezinta nimic altceva decat un exercitiu de limitare a intimitatii.