quotations about technology
We're merging with these nonbiological technologies. We're already on that path. I mean, this little Android phone I'm carrying on my belt is not yet inside my physical body, but that's an arbitrary distinction. It is part of who I am.
RAY KURZWEIL
"Reinvent Yourself", Playboy, April 19, 2016
As technology pervades, spying becomes cheaper and inequality becomes more stable -- but not infinitely stable. With enough inequality over enough time, the cherished idiocies of the ruling elites will eventually cause a collapse. All technology does is delay it, which is terrible news, since the longer a foolish policy is in place, the more of a policy-debt we incur, and the worse the payback will be: lost generations, rising seas, etc.
CORY DOCTOROW
"Technology is making the world more unequal. Only technology can fix this", The Guardian, May 31, 2017
There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Gather at the River", Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
We live among the marvels of science, but we know how little they change us. The essentials of life are what they were. We go by the train, but we are not improved at our journey's end. We have railways, and canals, and manufactures--excellent things, no doubt, but they do not touch the soul. Somehow, they seem to make life more superficial.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Biographical Studies
Back then, I had unambiguously stated Facebook is evil. But that was too broad a statement. I stand corrected. Any technology is only as good or as evil as you allow it to be. Come to think about it, is nuclear energy good? Yes, when deployed right. Evil, when deployed wrong. But who is to decide what is good and what is evil? Who gets to draw the lines? Where do the lines blur?
CHARLES ASSISI
"Honey, I know what you did last night", Live Mint, April 15, 2017
There will always be humans, lots of them, who provide the data that makes the networked realization of any technology better and cheaper.
JARON LANIER
Who Owns the Future?
As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive.
DON DELILLO
interview, The Paris Review, fall 1993
I suspect that if you closely examine your own life, there's a good chance some other technology company occupies the same role for you as Amazon does for me: As warden of a very comfortable corporate prison.
FARHAD MANJOO
"Technology is running your life", Channel News Asia, May 22, 2017
The higher the technology, the higher the freedom. Technology enforces certain solutions: satellite dishes, computers, videos, international telephone lines force pluralism and freedom onto a society.
LECH WALESA
interview, 1989
Our technology forces us to live mythically.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
The Medium Is the Message
Flight from and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha--which is to demean oneself.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
In the big picture, technology can sometimes be scary. But let's think about who we want to be and who we are, and that will help us decide how we are going to use the technology. Technology is neutral. It can be used in positive and negative ways. It's all about our values.
KEITH INSTONE
"How technology is changing our art, our world -- and even ourselves", Toledo Blade, May 21, 2017
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
"Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle", Rogers' Commission Report into the Challenger Crash, June 1986
Technology is how we add things to the world.
ANNE CHAPMAN
Democratizing Technology: Risk, Responsibility and the Regulation of Chemicals
Technology has doomed the spontaneity of adventure and we're helping destroy it every time we Google, check-in, and hashtag.
JEREMY GLASS
"We Can't Get Lost Anymore", Thought Catalog, April 1, 2013
First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.
JOHN BRUNNER
"continuity (14)", Stand on Zanzibar
This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.
DON DELILLO
White Noise
The way to solve the conflict between human values and technology needs is not to run away from technology. That's impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is--not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Technology and the machine resurrected San Francisco while Pompeii still slept in her ashes.
SILAS BENT
Machine Made Man
In the struggle for freedom of information, technology not politics will be the ultimate decider.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
attributed, Murdoch