Quotes About Technology

apart from the seemingly magical internet, life in broad material terms isn't so different from what it was in 1953...The wonders portrayed in THE JETSONS, the space-age television cartoon from the 1960s, have not come to pass...Life is better and we have more stuff, but the pace of change has slowed down compared to what people saw two or three generations ago.

If you have an unusual ability to spot, recruit, and direct those who work well with computers, even if you don't work well with computers yourself, the contemporary world will make you rich.

If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.

el individuo pasa de un consumo a otro en una especie de bulimia sin objetivo (el nuevo teléfono móvil nos ofrece poquísimas prestaciones nuevas respecto al viejo, pero el viejo tiene que ir al desguace para participar en esta orgía del deseo).

Las redes sociales le dan el derecho de hablar a legiones de idiotas que antes hablaban sólo en el bar después de un vaso de vino, sin dañar a la comunidad. Entonces eran rápidamente silenciados, pero ahora tienen el mismo derecho a hablar que un Premio Nobel. Es la invasión de los imbéciles

the environment is now transmitting less and less useful information, and more and more that is entirely useless. 2009

Such cultural gatherings also show that new ways of virtual socialization are not enough. You can have thousands of Facebook contacts, but in the end, unless you're completely stoned, you realize there is no real human contact online, so you look for opportunities to share experiences and be face-to-face with people who think like you. 2013

I social media danno diritto di parola a legioni di imbecilli che prima parlavano solo al bar dopo un bicchiere di vino, senza danneggiare la collettività. Venivano subito messi a tacere, mentre ora hanno lo stesso diritto di parola di un Premio Nobel. È l'invasione degli imbecilli

The mass media first convinced us that the imaginary was real, and now they are convincing us that the real is imaginary; and the more reality the TV screen shows us, the more cinematic our everyday world becomes. Until, as certain philosophers have insisted, we will think that we are alone in the world, and that everything else is the film that God or some evil spirit is projecting before our eyes.

But, for the so-called apocalyptics, McLuhan's conviction was translated into a tragic consequence: Liberated from the contents of communication, the addressee of the messages of the mass media receives only a global ideological lesson, the call to narcotic passiveness. When the mass media triumph, the human being dies.

To the anonymous divinity of Technological Communication our answer could be: "Not Thy, but our will be done.

También yo creía que estaba por surgir una sociedad igualitaria, pero me decía que en esa sociedad también tendrían que funcionar (y mejor que antes) los trenes, por ejemplo, y que los sans-culottes que me rodeaban no estaban aprendiendo en absoluto a cargar la caldera de carbón, a accionar las agujas, a elaborar una planilla de horarios.

But then, apart from politicians and the pope, why does anyone else use Twitter? Perhaps to feel important.

I know the present only through the television screen, whereas I have direct knowledge of the Middle Ages.

Have you ever wondered why in the last century all the great metropolises hastened to build subways?" "To solve traffic problems?" "Before there were automobiles, when there were only horse-drawn carriages? From

Disneyland tells us that technology can give us more reality than nature can.

modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on the fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials. No AI, no apps, and no electronic messages will change that.

during the past 30 years the maximum energy density of batteries has roughly tripled, and even if we were to triple that again densities would still be well below 3,000 Wh/kg in 2050—falling far short of taking a wide-body plane from New York to Tokyo or from Paris to Singapore, something we have been doing daily for decades with kerosene-fueled Boeings and Airbuses.

In short, for decades it will be impossible to adequately feed the planet without using fossil fuels as sources of energy and raw materials.

When ranked by the size of their labor force, in 1960 11 out of America's 15 largest companies (led by GM, Ford, GE, and United States Steel) were producers of goods employing more than 2.1 million workers; by 2010 just two makers of goods, HP and GE, employing about 600,000 people, were among the top 15, and the group is now dominated by retailers and service-providing firms (Walmart, UPS, McDonald's, Yum, Target).

Claims about the dematerialization of modern economies and about a postindustrial world in which manufacturing does not matter are costly misinterpretations of fundamental realities.

In two centuries, the human labor to produce a kilogram of American wheat was reduced from 10 minutes to less than two seconds.

In 1800 New England farmers (seeding by hand, with ox-drawn wooden plows and brush harrows, sickles, and flails) needed 150–170 hours of labor to produce their wheat harvest. By 1900 in California, horse-drawn gang-plowing, spring-tooth harrowing, and combine harvesting could produce the same amount of wheat in less than nine hours

No forecasts then – only brief reviews of some key factors that will determine the world's future quest for a reliable and affordable energy supply, and the major resource and technical options we can use during the next half-century.