Quotes About Progress

Libraries saw the Internet coming and extended a hand. First they set up computer stations for public use; then they offered free Wi-Fi. Now at Central Library and many other libraries around the country, there are kiosks where anyone can borrow a laptop or tablet computer to use for the day, just the way she might borrow a book.

transition from pre-Internet to omnipresent-Internet, and who was successfully rigging the library to sail into the future not as a gigantic, groaning, fusty pile of books but as a sleek ship of information and imagination.

award-winning, other growers will probably start working on hybrids with

This was in the early 1990s, the moment when Internet service providers were introduced to the general public, and for the first time in history, the status of libraries as the only and best storehouses of information was challenged. Szabo received his library degree just as people were beginning to wonder whether libraries were viable or even necessary in the newly wired world.

In 1936, the Works Progress Administration established a Pack Horse Librarians unit to serve the mountain communities in Kentucky.

sickly, but they'd both grown stronger on the trail.

Some aspects of life are strange or even terrible, but later something okay or even good happens that would never have happened without the bad/strange thing. -- "The Higher Power of Lucky

The future does not happen just by chance.

Well, I think by any expectation South Africa has come a tremendously long way. We've seen a society that many people thought couldn't withstand a peaceful transition to democracy without a great deal of violence, in fact, make that transition and do it in relative peace and security.

couldn't help but think that young man probably has never seen the window crank in a car! That's the handle exclusively used to roll down windows before electric windows existed. My twenty-year-old Miata has window cranks, which, I might add, get the job done quite well.

In Albert Einstein's words, "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.

Take it slow, little by little. Remember, every small step you take now is adding to bigger change later. Change builds exponentially, with increasing momentum, multiplying on itself.

Use missteps as stepping stones to deeper understanding and greater achievement.

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

According to a recent survey, for instance, the most-cited AI researchers expect AI to "carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human" within a 50 percent probability by 2050, and within a 90 percent probability by 2070.

Kurzweil and other transhumanists contend that we are fast approaching a "technological singularity," a point at which AI far surpasses human intelligence and is capable of solving problems we weren't able to solve before, with unpredictable consequences for civilization and human nature.

Remember that what gets talked about and how it gets talked about determines what will happen. Or won't happen. And that we succeed or fail, gradually then suddenly, one conversation at a time.

Do you view your relationship as something to be endured for the sake of the kids, or because you don't want to be alone, or because you don't think you could do better?  Or do you view your relationship, even with its imperfections, as a worthwhile work in progress?  How would your view influence how you interact with your partner, what you do, what you say?  What results would those interactions produce?

I have not yet witnessed a spontaneous recovery from incompetence.

Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.

I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.

Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.

Second-generation lawyers may fare better. Children of lawyers who followed in their parent's footsteps were more satisfied than most lawyers.

You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life.