Quotes About Technology

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.

We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.

I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.

Ravna thought a moment. "Sysadmin is the usual term," she said.

From this era on, I think invention will be the parent of necessity – and not the other way around.' That was easy for Sherkaner Underhill to say. He didn't have to engineer the science into reality.

Ty or Ra or Thect

We'll dedicate part of R00 to this mission. If their antenna swarm works properly, the Riders should have a thirty Kb/s link to Relay. You'll be their prime contact here, and you'll have access to our best strategists.

In 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, "Is it a fact—or have I dreamed it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!" Now, more than a century later, we can see the signs of his vision.

Yes," said Ravna, "on Nyjora." In the Age of Princesses, there had been the Elder Princess and the Younger, the Techie. The Age of Princesses was the most recent rediscovery of civilization in any known human history—and that civilization was also the ancestor of Ravna's Sjandra Kei and therefore of Johanna's Straumli Realm.

A thousand million times, castle technologies had fallen to things like cannon; why should her world be different?

So much technology, so little talent.

Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.

Half-assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience.

Second by second, the Queng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth's moon. But if you looked at it still more closely ... the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind's first computer operating systems.

Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father's castle.

Two things you should know about me; The first is that I am deeply suspicious of people in general. It is my nature to expect the worst of them. And the second is that I am unexpectedly good with computers.

The message for business people contemplating their place in cyberspace is simple and direct: get linked or get lost.

Marketing theory says that people are driven by fear, by the promise of exclusivity, by guilt and greed, and by the need for approval. Advertising technology, armed with market research and sophisticated psychology, aims to throw us off balance emotionally—and then promises to resolve our discomfort with a product.

DID WE WIN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?

Given the Western ability to produce deadly weapons, its propensity to create cheap, plentiful goods, and its tradition of seeing war in pragmatic rather than ritual terms as a mechanism to advance political ends, it is no surprise that Mesoamericans, African tribes, and native North Americans all joined European forces to help kill off Aztecs, Zulus, and Lakotas.

A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been.

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.