The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed.
—Robert A. Heinlein (1907–88) American Science Fiction Writer
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
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
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
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.
—Stewart Brand (b.1938) American Writer, Editor
Technology does not drive change—it enables change.
—Unknown
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
If you don’t know how to do something, you don’t know how to do it with a computer.
—Unknown
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
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
Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
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
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
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
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
If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery, in impoverishment.
—Michael Harrington (1928–89) American Socialist, Writer, Political Activist, Academic
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
Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
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
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
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
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
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
All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent
—David Brower (1912–2000) American Environmental Campaigner
I have no doubt that it is possible to give a new direction to technological development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means: to the actual size of man. Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful. To go for giantism is to go for self-destruction.
—E. F. Schumacher (1911–77) German Mathematician, Economist
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
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
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
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man’s soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
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
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.
—Andrew Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American Businessperson
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
Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable
—Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970) American Writer, Critic, Naturalist
Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is.
—Robert M. Pirsig (b.1928) American Writer, Philosopher, Author
Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power… but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
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
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
O misery, misery, mumble and moan!
Someone invented the telephone,
And interrupted a nation’s slumbers,
Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
—Richard Feynman (1918–88) American 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
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
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
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
Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won’t triumph over his fate.
—Arthur Koestler (1905–83) British Writer, Journalist, Political Refugee
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