Quotes About Technology

IT IS NO ACCIDENT that "wheels of industry" is such a cliché description of a manufacturing economy, since the application of force in the form of rotational motion is by far the most important component of useful work. In late eighteenth-century Britain, the wheels that mattered most were the ones turning the mills that ground the nation's grain, and the ones that spun the nation's cloth. Most of them used water; some used wind. None used steam.

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

The whole question of the steam engine is one of economy. It's development consist of nothing but the quest for greater efficiency.

The linearist view of technology fails to appreciate the dangers a new turning can bring. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is now predicting that everyone will soon tune in to a world of unlimited options via high-tech portable devices. What he nowhere mentions is that by merely reversing a few circuits the same technology could empower a central authority to monitor what every individual is doing.

Solar energy, in its many forms, has accustomed us to the idea that using energy must create huge environmental impacts, either by polluting or by occupying vast tracts of land. Terrestrial energy is so highly concentrated that it can provide us with enormous amounts of energy while barely leaving a trace. Combined with the contributions of solar power, terrestrial energy offers us the opportunity to power the world while eliminating all manners of environmental degradation.

The roaring street is hung for miles With fierce electric fire.

Rocket scientists agree that we have about reached the limit of our ability to travel in space using chemical rockets. To achieve anything near the speed of light we will need a new energy source and a new propellant. Nuclear fission is not an option.

those tribes whose infants creep and crawl tend to have more complex societies, higher technology, and some form of written language. Most tribes that restrict their infants from crawling have no writing of their own and can be taught to read only with great difficulty.

One crucial fact often gets overlooked in laments about the electronic assault on your ability to focus: your machines are not in charge of what you attend to—you are. When they prove distracting, you have only to turn them off.

By 1929 a handful of farsighted flight pioneers had concluded that "aviation could not progress until planes could fly safely day or night in almost any kind of weather." Foremost among these was Dr. Jimmy Doolittle, recently armed with a PhD in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In

With the advances of science he saw moral perspective being lost. Science and technology practically took on the role of religion, so that man was actually worshipping at the altar of science, a fallacy, if not a heresy, that could lead to the undoing of the American spirit.

They had graduated from cloth-and-wood flying machines in the dawn of human flight to steel and aluminum behemoths with thousands of horsepower and terrific firepower;

Josiah Parkes, inventor of a tile system for draining soils.

Well, anybody who cannot embrace the power of Internet is just limiting themselves.

Computer machen keine Fehler, aber es ist nun einmal die Natur der Menschen, Fehler zu machen und daraus zu lernen. Nimm ihnen dieses Recht und du nimmst ihnen ihre Menschlichkeit

Theaters are always going to be around, and doing fine. With computers and technology, we're becoming more and more secluded from each other. And the movie theater is one of the last places where we can still gather and experience something together. I don't think the desire for that magic will ever go away.

Television in the '80s was very limited. There was no Food Network.

Electronicization will do to the middle class what mechanization has done to the working class, and it will do it much faster

For example, a telegram is a "lightning-letter"; a wireless telegram is a "not-have-wire-lightning-communication"; a fountain-pen is a "self-flow-ink-water-brush"; a typewriter is a "strike-letter-machine". Most of these neologisms are similar in the modern languages of China and Japan.

In all technologically "advanced" countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community.

The human species does not necessarily move in stages from progress to progress ... history and civilization do not advance in tandem. From the stagnation of Medieval Europe to the decline and chaos in recent times on the mainland of Asia and to the catastrophes of two world wars in the twentieth century, the methods of killing people became increasingly sophisticated. Scientific and technological progress certainly does not imply that humankind as a result becomes more civilized.

Your voice is trapped inside this machine. It's not broken, it's just been sealed off now that it no longer has a purpose.

Man sagte mir, die Welt sei vernetzt, die Entfernung spiele keine Rolle mehr. Es schien mir aber so, als ob nicht die Entfernung, sondern die Nähe keine Rolle mehr spiele. Auch jemanden, der nebenan sitzt, kann man eine E-Mail schicken. Ist die Welt wirklich vernetzt oder ist sie vielleicht verletzt?

People are always saying the humanities are dead so it's strange how many conferences there are.