Quotes About Technology

Negotiation, Information Technology, and the Problem of the Faceless Other," in Leigh L. Thompson, editor, Negotiation Theory and Research (Psychology Press, 2006).

Hewlett-Packard is somewhat riskier than GE; Amazon.com, riskier still.

Technology provides the potential, by use of well-produced books, film, television, and interactive computer-controlled systems of various kinds. These, and other developments, provide many opportunities for expanding our minds-or else for deadening them. The human mind is capable of vastly more than it is often given the chance to achieve. Sadly, these opportunities are all to frequently squandered, and the minds of neither young nor old are provided the openings that they undoubtedly deserve.

Perhaps it is conceivable that, in the future, some different kind of 'computer' might be introduced, that makes critical use of continuous physical parameters-albeit within the standard theoretical framework of today's physics-enabling it to behave in a way that is essentially different from a digital computer.

The judgement-forming that I am claiming is the hallmark of consciousness is itself something that the AI people would have no concept of how to program on a computer.

Earth is long since dead. On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rule their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons, Lord of Light.

I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals; I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.

T]he more technology develops the diffusion of information (and notably of images), the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the appearance of the given meaning.

Until the advent of fast railway trains, in the late nineteenth century, a skier was the fastest human being on earth.

Vagabonding is about using the prosperity and possibility of the information age to increase your personal options instead of your personal possessions.

Searching for oil was wildly unpredictable, whereas refining seemed safe and methodical by comparison.

1791, the U.S. government granted patents for Parkinson's flax mill, even though he had admitted that they were "improvements upon the mill or machinery . . . in Great Britain."32 Clearly, the U.S. government condoned something that, in modern phraseology, could be termed industrial espionage. Building upon this precedent, Hamilton put the full authority of the Treasury behind the piracy of British trade secrets.

Curiosity-driven research may seem self-indulgent and far from the immediate public good. However, essentially all of our current quality of life, for people living in the first world, has arisen from the fruits of such research, including all the electric power that drives almost every device we use. Two

A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments that could have recorded them, and not today, is still something to wonder about.

Imagine the uproar if the Federal government tried to make everyone wear a radio transmitter around their neck so we can keep track of their movements. But people happily carry their cell phones in their purses and pockets.

Reacher said, What have we missed ? Ratcliffe said, A piece of the puzzle. What do you know about computers ? I saw one once.

The most unbelievable scene in any action movie was the part where Tom Cruise jammed the thumb drive into the slot and it slid in on the first try.

Either it was general reconnaissance ahead of a further incursion at a future date, in which case it had likely involved cameras and thermal imaging and ground-penetrating radar, or it was the actual search for Keever itself, which they had long predicted would include the air, in which case it would involve pretty much the same technology, but it would find nothing either, because of the hogs.

Does this thing have fast forward?" Sorenson asked. "Hold down the shift key," the kid said.

Suppose twenty years ago Congress had proposed a law saying every citizen had to wear a radio transponder around his neck, all day and all night, so the government could track him wherever he went. Can you imagine the outrage? But instead the citizens went right ahead and did it to themselves. In their pockets and purses, not around their necks, but the outcome is the same.

Inside was a ten-digit keypad. A combination lock. One through nine, plus zero, laid out like a telephone. A possible 3,628,800 variants. It

Smoke alarms are compulsory in homes because they contain cameras and microphones wirelessly linked to the government. With poison gas capsules too, in case the government doesn't like what you're saying or doing.

The Python was a double-action weapon, which meant the same trigger pull cocked the hammer and then dropped it, so he started early, getting the cylinder turning while the gun was still moving, seeing the hammer come up, feeling the cams and the levers, waiting, then firing, trusting millisecond timing and momentum and deflection and complex four-dimensional calculations.

She has a caller ID system," Reacher said. "With coordinates. She's probably watching this house right now, on Google Earth." "But it's dark." "Don't ask me how it works." He