Quotes About Technology

Computation is fundamentally a representational medium, but as we attempt to expand the ways in which we interact with computation, we need to pay attention to the duality of representation and participation.

As We May Think

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

To give an estimate is to say something you don't know absolutely to be true, and therefore it is to tell a lie, something geeks find deeply painful.

they were assisted by the new technological invention of the telephone (that enemy of reflection, which became increasingly accepted as as means of communication) . . .

It's hard to say exactly what it is about face-to-face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology.

If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.

There is all the more reason for startups to write Web-based software now, because writing desktop software has become a lot less fun. If you want to write desktop software now you do it on Microsoft's terms, calling their APIs and working around their buggy OS. And if you manage to write something that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for Microsoft.

Rutherford showed how radio waves could travel long distances, penetrate walls, and magnetize iron.

Bloomberg predicts that wind energy will be the lowest-cost energy globally by 2030.

Santos-Dumont did not believe in patents. He made the blueprints of his airships freely available to anyone who wanted them. He saw the flying machine as a chariot of peace, bringing estranged cultures in contact with one another so that they could get to know one another as people, thereby reducing the potential for hostilities.

You couldn't have fed the '50s into a computer and come out with the '60s.

What do they be teaching the young these days? I declare, they think more on machines and formulas than they do on the true knowledge of the world. They blow things up, and calls it progress. They kills one another by the million, and calls it civilization.

What do they be teaching the young these days? I declare, they think more on machines and formulas than they do on the true knowledge of the world. They blow things up, and call it progress. They kills one another by the million, and calls it civilization... But you takes a single life, just one, and that is murder most foul, and they will pin you for that, and lay it against you the rest of your life. It hardly seems fair.

social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind.

The Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's….ten years from now, the phrase "information economy" will sound silly. (1997)

In proportion as the machine is improved and performs man's work with an ever increasing rapidity and exactness, the labourer, instead of prolonging his former rest times, redoubles his ardour, as if he wished to rival the machine. O, absurd and murderous competition!

In America the machine is invading all branches of farm production, from the making of butter to the weeding of wheat. Why, because the American, free and lazy, would prefer a thousand deaths to the bovine life of the French peasant. Plowing, so painful and so crippling to the laborer in our glorious France, is in the American West an agreeable open-air pastime, which he practices in a sitting posture, smoking his pipe nonchalantly.

In the 21st century, we'll work at home and recycle our garbage into compost. The computer will link us with the office, the grocery store, and each other. Microscopic chips and scanners will transcribe details even the most astute biographer would overlook

Maybe it's old-fashioned, but I'm opposed to sneakers without laces. Digital watches and pocket calculators, too. Gizmos that make life easier and dull our minds. Besides being unable to read or write, today's kids have trouble telling time, multiplying nine time seven, and tying their shoes

He gave me a lecture about the power of pounding the pavement, even in these days when computers and cell towers and security cameras keep track of what we eat and drink, where we travel and sleep, who we screw, when we leave the house, and down what forbidden road Google has taken us.

I'm not saying she's dumb, but she thinks the Silicon Valley is the space between her tits.

Wearing an off-white skier's jumpsuit, he had a bullhorn in one hand, a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, a digital thermometer zippered on his sleeve, and a revolver holstered on his hip.

In my mind android is a metaphor for people who are physiologically human but behaving in a nonhuman way.