This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man – if man is not enslaved by it.
—Jonas Salk (1914–95) American Biologist, Physician, Medical Researcher
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
—Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) American Theoretical Physicist, Author
One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
—Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English Fantasy Writer
Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.
—Andrew Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American Businessperson
Technology…is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.
—C. P. Snow
Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.
—Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) American Theoretical Physicist, Author
As industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away from where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association and affection.
—Wendell Berry (b.1934) American Poet, Novelist, Environmentalist
Technology does not drive change—it enables change.
—Unknown
Theory: when you have ideas. Ideology: when ideas have you.
—Anonymous
A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricatural. Our world is a world of things…. What we dread most, in the face of the impending d
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
—Alan Watts (1915–73) British-American Philosopher, Author
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means of going backward.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
—Carl Sagan (1934–96) American Astronomer
Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures—in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.
—Georges Pompidou (1911–74) French Statesman
The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.
—Steve Ballmer (b.1956) American Businessperson, Philantropist
Technology: No Place for Wimps!
—Scott Adams (b.1957) American Cartoonist
If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
—Unknown
There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
—Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish Physicist
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
—Carl Sagan (1934–96) American Astronomer
The difference between a professional person and a technician is that a technician knows everything about his job except its ultimate purpose and his place in the scheme of things.
—Richard Livingstone (1880–1960) British Scholar, Educator, Academic
If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.
—Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) American Theoretical Physicist, Author
People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It’s a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it’s the togetherness of modern technology.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent
—David Brower (1912–2000) American Environmental Campaigner
We must learn to balance the material wonders of technology with the spiritual demands of our human race.
—John Naisbitt American Trend Analyst
Computers in the future will weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
—Unknown
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
—Omar Bradley (1893–1981) American Military Leader
The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
—Richard Feynman (1918–88) American Physicist
If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG.
—Bill Gates (b.1955) American Businessperson, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Author
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
If you don’t know how to do something, you don’t know how to do it with a computer.
—Unknown
If I were required to guess off-hand, and without collusion with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the part of men to believe that a new idea can have value.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–67) American Nuclear Physicist
Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
—Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British Scientist, Science-fiction Writer
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Persons grouped around a fire or candle for warmth or light are less able to pursue independent thoughts, or even tasks, than people supplied with electric light. In the same way, the social and educational patterns latent in automation are those of self-employment and artistic autonomy.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.
—E. F. Schumacher (1911–77) German Mathematician, Economist