Quotes About Technology

And just fifty years had separated the Wright Brothers from the first jet airliners.

This would involve disconnection—the computer equivalent of death. Despite

Hal in full control of the ship. The

fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased.

Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Reliability depended on redundancy and automatic checking, and human intervention was much more likely to do harm than good.

Can you sum up your ideas in less than—oh, a thousand bits?

This implies, of course, the development of a really compact and light-weight method of storing or producing electricity, at least an order of magnitude better than our present clumsy batteries. Such an invention has been overdue for about fifty years;

the cipher was based on the product of two hundred-digit prime numbers, and the National Security Agency had staked its reputation on the claim that the fastest computer in existence could not crack it before the Big Crunch at the end of the Universe.

There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men's minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photo-electric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform. There were factories that ran for weeks without being visited by a single human being. Men were needed for trouble-shooting, for making decisions, for planning new enterprises. The robots did the rest.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials—these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether.

Miss Pringle was not much larger than the handheld personal assistants of his own age, and usually lived, like the Old West's Colt 45, in a quick-draw holster at his waist.

The sixth member of the crew cared for none of these things, for it was not human. It was the highly advanced HAL 9000 computer, the brain and nervous system of the ship.

Hal's internal fault predictor could have made a mistake." "It's more

Long ago it had been decided that, however inconsequential rudeness to robots might appear to be, it should be discouraged. All too easily, it could spread to human relationships as well.

Hello, Dave," said Hal presently. "Have you found the trouble?" This

There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men's minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photo-electric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform.

We're particularly anxious to get our hands on Pioneer 10—the first man-made object to escape from the Solar System.

The toolmakers had been remade by their own tools.

A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible - indeed, inevitable - the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.

They both knew, of course, that Hal was hearing every word

Bowman could bear no more. He jerked out the last unit, and Hal was silent forever.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents

The sixth member of the crew cared for none of these things, for it was not human. It was the highly advanced HAL 9000 computer