Quotes About Technology

Virtual Reality is like mainlining television.

The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed. The Economist, December 4, 2003

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.

The value of most high-tech products is determined by the cost of alternative solutions to the customer.

But for high-tech products (and many others) promotions can't change reality.

Most of the mainframe computer companies never successfully made the transition to minicomputers, and most mini-computer companies missed out on PCs.

Time is the deadly enemy of the technology business. Today's great idea is tomorrow's obsolete concept. The longer it takes a company to get its product to the market, the greater the likelihood a competitor will be there first. Big plans with extended schedules are a risk in any business,

The I.B.M. machine has no ethic of its own; what it does is enable one or two people to do the computing work that formerly required many more people. If people often use it stupidly, it's their stupidity, not the machine's, and a return to the abacus would not exorcise the failing. People can be treated as drudges just as effectively without modern machines.

Dicho científico decidió desarrollar un aparato que contara el número de veces que una partícula surge y desaparece en un segundo. Denominó, con gran acierto, al aparato que había inventado: "cámara de burbujas", y se encontró con que una partícula subatómica surge y se desvanece 1022 veces por segundo.

The computer-simulated dreamworld of the Matrix trilogy is a technological version of Descartes's evil demon. In essence it represents the idea of a mind (the Architect) more powerful than our own that is intent on deceiving us whenever, and however, it sees fit.

Not all intelligence can be artificial now, so if we make a mistake, the consequences are no longer simply located within an institution or a national culture.

There are many reasons for increased spending on health care, including an aging population, technological change, perverse incentives, supply-induced demand, and fear of malpractice litigation. The broader point is that the basic underlying problem does not entail misbehavior or incompetence but rather stems from the nature of the provision of labor-intensive services.

In the words of classicist Jennifer Wise, "With little exaggeration, it could be said that the entirety of the Odyssey ultimately boils down to one simple technological problem: the epic hero's inability to write home."35

Of all the communications technologies discussed in this book, radio and television are the most hierarchical; no preceding media could reach so many people so instantaneously and with so little feedback in the opposite direction.

Once we are aware of the connection between political power and access to communication technology, it becomes obvious throughout all of human history. These technologies are not in and of themselves oppressive or liberating. Rather, it is relative access to them that determines political reality.

David Sarnoff had predicted, the radio became the ornate mahogany god of the American living room: there were three million sets in 1924, thirty million in 1936, and fifty million by 1940, by which time a simple radio could be had for less than ten dollars.

Such was the pattern employed by the Romans during their centuries of conquest: first, recruit the ablest soldiers from recently pacified local populations overawed by the legionaries' size, military prowess, technology, and literacy; second, teach the new troops not only to fight but also to read and write Latin (or, in the East, Greek); and last, employ these intellectually and physically impressive specimens to conquer, pacify, overawe, and recruit adjoining peoples.

The scribe was no mere linguistic technician, but rather the sole possessor of the skill set that made civilization hum, a sort of investment banker, engineer, and diplomat all rolled up into one. Or, in the words of the linguist Ignaz Gelb, "Writing exists only in a civilization, and a civilization cannot exist without writing."47

In the new economy, information, education, and motivation are everything.

In today's knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn. Jobs in the information technology sector, for example, pay 85 percent more than the private sector average.

The schools turn wonder into drudgery and uniqueness into aberration. Acceptance by the dulled others becomes worth almost any surrender, and nothing is worth the price of solitude: to read, to ponder, to paint, to pray. In the new Plato's cave, we have the electronic shadows to make the unreal true and to give us an ersatz peace — even though every ad ever produced is deliberately formulated to make us unhappy.

So if you're a robot and you're living on this planet, you can do things that you can't do in real life - things that you wished you could do: like fly like have a car that flies like have furniture that is alive.

In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on and uninhabited planet.