Quotes About Technology

Every time [some software engineer] says, "Nobody will go to the trouble of doing that," there's some kid in Finland who will go to the trouble. — Alex Mayfield

Speaking at the Chaos Communication Congress, an annual computer hacker conference held in Berlin, Germany, Tobias Engel, founder of Sternraute, and Karsten Nohl, chief scientist for Security Research Labs, explained that they could not only locate cell-phone callers anywhere in the world, they could also listen in on their phone conversations. And if they couldn't listen in real time, they could record the encrypted calls and texts for later decryption.

the march of technology isn't to be seen in the act of me hijacking Logan's car, but in me knowing that I had to do it.

I love the smell of turbines in the morning.

Screened bottom boards were used by beekeepers more than 150 years ago for improved ventilation. Beekeepers replaced them with solid bottom boards in the winter, and over time the expense of having two pieces of equipment fell into disfavor, and the screens went away.)

You just click your heels and think there's no place like being pwned.

I thought it odd that the woman was over a thousand years old but thought the microwave was primitive.

Half of it was meticulously arranged as an office with her computer - faster and more powerful than an industrial-sized package of laxative - color-coded files, maps and the markers she used to organize her runs. The other half of the table was mine and empty. I wish I could say it was neatness, but when I had a run, I ran it. I didn't analyze it to death.

Mr. Ray, you yelled at it again, didn't you? I told you, computers are like women. If you shout at them or ask them to do too many things at once, they shut down and you won't even get a sniff.

Where was our language of reverence? Of sacredness? Every year in America we add hundreds of words to our dictionaries that describe our infatuation with pop culture and technology, but none that describe a deepening regard for the natural world.

Every year in America we add hundreds of words to our dictionaries that describe our infatuation with pop culture and technology, but none that describe a deepening regard for the natural world.

They lived like monkeys still, while their new god powers lay around them in the weeds.

if you program a purpose into a computer program, does that constitute its will? Does it have free will, if a programmer programmed its purpose?

A major part of sustainability is social justice, here and everywhere. Think of it this way: justice is a technology. It's like a software program that we use to cope with the world and get along with each other, and one of the most effective we have ever invented, because we are all in this together. When you realize that acting with justice and generosity turns out to be the most effective technology for dealing with other people, that's a good thing.

Chalmers stopped listening and let his gaze wander over the new city. They were going to call it Nicosia. It was the first town of any size to be built free-standing on the Martian surface; all the buildings were set inside what was in effect an immense clear tent, supported by a nearly invisible frame, and placed on the rise of Tharsis, west of Noctis Labyrinthus. This location gave it a tremendous view, with a distant western horizon punctuated by the broad peak of Pavonis Mons.

the passenger compartment of this one goes right to the moon. The booster stage will come back down after your launch and land right over there." She pointed across the concrete

I'm told finance doesn't require very complicated math. One guy told me that if you just designed a clean data display, people were amazed. So it's more just advanced programming

It's a stealth tax imposed on the exchanges by high-frequency trading, by the cloud itself. A rent.

We were simply strip-mining the lifeworld, as one Germanic voice from the screen put it, sounding like Werner Herzog to a lot of us, and I have no doubt he could have been involved, and that in German words like lifeworld would be real words already.

Now, everyone knows everything. No one on the planet is ignorant of the real conditions of our shared social existence. That's one real thing those stupid smartphones have done; you can be illiterate, many are, and still have an excellent idea of how the world works.

Kim Stanley Robinson

Crap in the Cloud. A novel of celestial sewage.

The Amex man had even lifted his wrist to his mouth to take down a note, in a gesture obviously meant to be seen:

Kim Stanley Robinson