technology quotes

   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(ames) G(raham) Ballard
  Crash.

The military system is, to a substantial extent, a method whereby the population provides a subsidy to the high technology industry.

- (Avram) Noam Chomsky
  Interview, Public Broadcasting System, 4 Nov.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

- SirArthur C(harles) Clarke
  Profiles of the Future, introduction.

Science and technology, like all original creations of the human spirit, are unpredictable. 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 topushitforwardor tostop it, isgambling inhumanlives.

- FreemanJ(ohn) Dyson
  Disturbing the Universe, ch.1.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

- Richard P(hillips) Feynman
  What DoYOU CareWhat Other People Think?

Technik†Kniff, dieWelt so einzurichten, dass wir sie nicht erleben mu«  ssen. Technology†the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.

- Max Rudolph Frisch
  Homo Faber, pt.2.

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of todayare no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages wrought by the technology of yesterday.

- Dennis Gabor
  Innovations.

The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowlyand deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius.Theresulting performance, though lessinspiring, is far more predictable.

-John Kenneth Galbraith
  The New Industrial State.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

- Bill (William Henry III) Gates
  In the Independent on Sunday,12 Oct.

The essence of technology is by no means anything technological.

- Martin Heidegger
  'The Question Concerning Technology', collected in Basic Writings (1977).

   Science is the reduction of the bewildering diversity of unique events to manageable uniformity within one of a number of symbol systems, and technology is the art of using thesesymbol systemssoastocontrol and organize unique events. Scientific observation is always a viewing of things through the refracting medium of a symbol system, and technological praxis is always handling of things in ways that some symbol system has dictated. Education in science and technology is essentially education on the symbol level.

- Aldous Leonard Huxley
  In Daedalus, spring issue.

Wildness and silence disappeared fromthe countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced.

- Archibald MacLeish
  'The Great  American Frustration', in the Saturday Review, 9  Jul.

   Thetechnologyofdecentralization can bethesaviouror assassin of contemporary and future society. The role of architects may be uncertain, but the role of architecture is not. In order to look forward society may sometimes haveto look back.This it should do inorder to learnfrom previous mistakes and oversights and to preclude similar eventualities in the future. This does not imply historical dependency, as some would assert. The symbiosis of architecture and technology should prevail, engendered by honesty and integrity. The task will not be easy.

- Ian Murphy
  'The impact of the environment: the shock of the new', in Ben Farmer and Hentie Louw (eds) Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought (1993).

Technology breaks the laws and makes the laws.

- Frank also known as  'DrTomorrow' Ogden
  Ogdenisms: The Frank Ogden Quote Book.

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
  Alternating Current.

Technology†is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

- C(harles) P(ercy), 1st Baron Snow
In the NewYorkTimes,15 Mar.

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be thebiggest party pooperofour lives.It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.

- Steven Spielberg
  In Wired, Jun.

Technology, while adding daily to our physical ease, throws dailyanother loop of fine wire around our souls. It contributes hugely to our mobility, which we must not confuse with freedom. The extensions of our senses, which we find so fascinating, are not adding to the discrimination of our minds, since we need increasingly to take the reading of a needle on a dial to discover whether we think something isgood or bad, or right or wrong.

- Adlai E(wing) Stevenson
  'My Faith in Democratic Capitalism', in Fortune, Oct.

Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.

- Alvin Toffler
  Future Shock.