Quotes About Technology

we have wholly abandoned ourselves to the mercy of technological progress. The roles are now reversed: humanity becomes, for technology, a means, an instrument for achieving a goal unknown and unknowable.

I stood, or rather hung suspended, in a bed of air, all of one piece with my metal shell.

Reverend Father, your line of thought has taken a dangerous path! Just another step, and you'll be telling me offspring can be produced not at the drawing board, by testing prototypes in a laboratory, with the highest concentration of the spirit in the metal, but in a bed, without any templates or training, at random, in the dark, and quite unintentionally . . .

Pensa che in un razzo l'uomo può scoppiare come un pallone o restare pietrificato, o andare arrosto, e poi rimangono solo gli ossicini, a ballonzolare fra le pareti di latta, sulle orbite del progresso! Noi abbiamo seguito, con gioia, questa stupenda via... e siamo arrivati, e in queste celle, sopra questi piatti, tra immortali lavandini, con una schiera di armadi fedeli, di gabinetti affezionati, qua c'è la nostra realizzazione...

DüÅŸün ki ben bir bak???kçan?n mimarisinin t?pk?üretimini yapabilme yetisindeyim, bileÅŸimini biliyorum, gerekli teknolojim var... bir bak???kça yarat?yorum ve okyanusa b?rak?yorum. Ama bunu niye yapt???m? bilmiyorum, iÅŸlevini bilmiyorum, bak???kçan?n okyanus için ne anlama geldiÄŸini bilmiyorum...

Why hire a lawyer? I'll make myself one! And Trurl went home, threw six heaping teaspoons of transistors into a big pot, added again as many condensers and resistors, poured electrolyte over it, stirred well and covered tightly with a lid, then went to bed, and in three days the mixture had organized itself into a first-rate lawyer.

Pirx had long ago observed that a man could be judged better by his behavior toward robots than toward his fellow man.

This was how I saw it: the Senders definitely had had no intention of sending us a Pandora's box; but we, like burglars, forced the lock, and stamped upon the plundered contents everything that in Earth's science was mercenary, predatory.

Kryterium zdrowego rozsÄ…dku nie jest do historii ludzkiej stosowalne. Czy Averroes, Kant, Sokrates. Newton, Wolter, uwierzyliby, ?e w wieku dwudziestym plagÄ… miast, trucicielem pÅ'uc, masowym mordercÄ…, przedmiotem kultu stanie siÄ™ blaszany wózek na kóÅ'kach i ?e ludzie bÄ™dÄ… woleli gin?? w nim rozstrzaskiwani podczas masowych weekendowych wyjazdów, ani?eli siedzie? caÅ'o w domu?

cybernetician.

Science fiction involves the art of putting hypothetical premises into the very complicated stream of sociopsychological occurrences.

Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter - for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.

The beauty part of business warfare, unless your business is importing cocaine from Colombia or covering up a nuclear fuel spill in the Midwest, is that there is rarely any actual blood involved. Maybe that's why we can forgive Sun Tzu now and then for being such a careful sissy-boy. His guys were playing with live ammo, not cell phones and BlackBerrys.

Tech made all things possible, and therefore mandatory. Not to mention the fact that carrying around all this smartphone in your purse or pocket had become such a fantastic drag. Cranial implant was so much easier. Now they could be in touch with the hive 24/7 and have their hands free for whatever. Their cars drove them everywhere, too. Also left them free to, you know, do whatever.

Labella snapped shut her cell phone with a sigh, and looked down at her fingernails, delightfully painted a useless shade of purple.

Up until 1950 most families' discretionary income did not cover much more than an occasional meal away from home; a beer or two after work; a weekly trip to the movies, amusement park, or beach; and perhaps a yearly vacation, usually spent at the home of relatives. Few households had washing machines and dryers. Refrigerators had only tiny spaces for freezing ice and had to be defrosted at least once a week. Few houses had separate bedrooms for all the children.

When the prepared foods and drip-dry shirts that had eased the work of homemakers also made it possible for men to live comfortable, if sloppy, bachelor lives . . .

At what point will elegant linguistic languor be permanently usurped by text-speak expediency? When will we humans abandon the ability to generate long, complex, lusciously worded emotional expressions—like Elizabethan sonnets!

The parity principles show how our tools, especially well-designed tools, can profoundly enhance our capabilities to understand. If we define the mind as the brain, we must also admit to its limitations. There is much we cannot remember or learn or analyze or make sense of, until we extend the mind outward. This is why we make tools and technologies, not for their own sake, but to overcome the inherent limitations of our innate cognitive capabilities. This is the work of design.

But this is an instance where we also have to allow for some creative licence. Avatar is about a clash of cultures, the heavy handed technological human civilisation versus the gracef Navi, living lightly in their world.

Colonists of, ah, Per Ardua, meet your autonomous colonisation unit!

Stephen Baxter

Earth was the first planet to be terraformed.

The sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach