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
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: No Place for Wimps!
—Scott Adams (b.1957) American Cartoonist
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
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
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
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 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 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
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
Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
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
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
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
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
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
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
Computers in the future will weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
—Unknown
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
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 Microbiologist
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
Theory: when you have ideas. Ideology: when ideas have you.
—Anonymous
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
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
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable
—Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970) American Writer, Critic, Naturalist
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
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