Technology Quotes - page 86
I'm a teenage kid who's interested in improving the world (mostly through law, politics, and technology).
This year, I'm going to try to update my weblog daily with interesting thoughts, program some interesting new website software, and work on some website projects that help people better understand what's going on in American politics.
Aaron Swartz
I don't own a computer, or a modem, or anything like that; I still work on a manual typewriter, by choice, and to those who consider me a Luddite I say: Fuck you and yo mama. I operate at the level of technology that best suits my needs. And I type at 120 words per minute - two fingers - I make no mistakes, and my manuscripts are real. You can pick them up and hold them. My typewriter doesn't dump its memory - I don't lose a book.
Harlan Ellison
As a father, as a girl dad, the portrayal of women in Black Panther is almost certainly what I admired the most, from the chief technology officer to even the baddest person on the film, who to me was the general, who was my favorite character and certainly my wife's favorite character. But then also, I just want to again emphasize that this is possible. We currently have a tech industry where women and particularly women of color are far and away underrepresented or imagine that it's not their place or imagine that they don't have the intellectual capacity. And these are all sexist and racist lies. And women, particularly women of color, can be the chief technology officer of the baddest place, I should say the most technologically advanced sort of companies or places on earth. That's possible, if we can create that type of sort of society.
Ibram X. Kendi
None of these problems resolved by the prescriptions of shamans and priests. Not by patronizing mystics or condescending monks.
Technology. That's what made things better! In fits and starts-and often horribly abused along the way-that's where we found answers that were consistent, dependable, uncapricious. Answers that applied to lord and vassal alike. Answers that improved life across the board and never went away.
David Brin
The society was the nearest thing to perfection that had ever existed; vital without being violent, stable without being stagnant. This society had resulted from a number of factors, the most important being a small population served by a sophisticated technology and an equally sophisticated administrative system. The arts were alive, there was universal literacy, the philosophies flourished.
Michael Moorcock
Yes, I know bad bad people can also use the .fla files for dastardly deeds (the dreaded hypothetical "Nazi Porn Version” that always comes up at Q&A's). Bad bad people can use our shared Language and Technology for evil too, but I'm not going to constipate culture out of fear of imaginary worst-case scenarios. I'm confident much more good will come from this than bad, and that's motivation enough for me. It's Free Culture, baby. If programmers can tinker with the Free Software's source code, artists can tinker with Sita Sings the Blues‘ source files.
Nina Paley
In 1979, with changing technology, I wrote and produced a video on the life and times of Eugene Victor Debs that was sold to colleges around the country. Debs was a great American who played an enormously important role in our history, but he was unknown to most people. He was one of the leading trade union leaders of the late nineteenth century, the founder of the American Socialist Party, and a six-time candidate for president of the United States. In 1920, he received nearly 1 million votes for president while he was in jail for his opposition to World War I. Many of the ideas that Debs campaigned on were later adopted by FDR and incorporated into the New Deal. Today, I have a plaque of Debs on a wall in my Senate office.
Eugene V. Debs
I fully understand the men behind Al Qaeda. They have tried to assassinate me twice before. The Pakistan Peoples Party and I represent everything they fear the most - moderation, democracy, equality for women, information, and technology. We represent the future of a modern Pakistan, a future that has no place in it for ignorance, intolerance, and terrorism.
The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated. I will step out on the tarmac in Karachi not to complete a journey, but to begin one. Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it.
Benazir Bhutto
The Laundry is the British Government's secret agency for dealing with "magic.” The use of scare-quotes is deliberate; as Sir Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” so "magic” is what we deal with. Note that this does not involve potions, pentacles, prayers, eldritch chanting, dressing up in robes and pointy hats, or most (but not all) of the stuff associated with the term in the public mind. No, our magic is computational. The realm of pure mathematics is very real indeed, and the...things...that cast shadows on the walls of Plato's cave can sometimes be made to listen and pay attention if you point a loaded theorem at them. This is, however, a very dangerous process, because most of the shadow-casters are unclear on the distinction between pay attention and free buffet lunch here. My job-applied computational demonologist-comes with a very generous pension scheme, because most of us don't survive to claim it.
Charles Stross
Science fiction may be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the response of human beings to advances in science and technology. Actual change in science and technology, occurring quickly enough and striking deeply enough to affect a human being in the course of his normal lifetime, is a phenomenon peculiar to the world only since the Industrial Revolution ... The first well-known writer who responded to this new factor in human affairs by dealing regularly with science fiction, by studying the effect of additional scientific advance upon mankind ... was Jules Verne. In the English language, the early master was H. G. Wells. Between them, they laid the foundation for every theme upon which science fiction writers have been ringing variations ever since.
Isaac Asimov
A young man in Australia, a long, long time ago, well before we ever knew about WikiLeaks, had an idea: the idea of using Big Brother's technology to create a large digital kind of mirror to turn to the face of Big Brother so as to enable us to be able to watch him watching us - a bit like turning the mirror to the face of the Medusa. WikiLeaks is based on that idea.
Julian Assange
Let there be light, says the Bible. All the firmaments of technology, all our computers and networks, are built with light, and of light, and for light, to hasten its spread around the world. Light glows on the telescom's periphery; it shines as its core; it illuminates its webs and its links. From Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein to Richard Feynman and Charles Townes, the more men have gazed at light, the more it turns out to be a phenomenon utterly different from anything else. And yet everything else - every atom and every molecula - is fraught with its oscillating intensity.
George Gilder
You see, most modern technology doesn't work. It's supposed to free you, but it's a terrible trap, of course. Mobile phones for example: everybody has one now. I have one and they're awful. They've completely ruined, I mean, people ring you up and say "Hi, it's me, I'm in the bath!" and you go "Well, you're still an asshole, I hope you drown and hello." And they've completely dispensed with the whole drama of news, the simple idea of having something to relate, you know. When you could bound in from the garden and pick up the old Bakelite phone that weighted seven pounds and say "MIRIAM'S DEAD”. You can't do that anymore. You're probably there! [pantomiming being on phone] "Yes, her head's rolling back, spit's coming out, her eyes are going everywhere, here, I'll take a picture -click- you see what I mean? Sheeee's fucked!"
Dylan Moran
While ritual, emotion and reasoning are all significant aspects of human nature, the most nearly unique human characteristic is the ability to associate abstractly and to reason. Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts--a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the "humanities.” Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human. Mathematics is as much a "humanity” as poetry.
Carl Sagan
The inhibitions placed on the irresponsible use of technology are weak, often half-hearted, and almost always, worldwide, subordinated to short-term national or corporate interest. We are now able, intentionally or inadvertently, to alter the global environment. Just how far along we are in working the various prophesied planetary catastrophes is still a matter of scholarly debate. But that we are able to do so is now beyond question.
Carl Sagan
I have one thing against medical technology. You see, the very desire to understand the human being is to control him - that is why I am not quite in sympathy. The day you control the endocrine glands, you will change the personality of man; you won't need any brainwashing. Brainwashing is a very elaborate process. If nature had been allowed to go on in its own way, everybody would have become a unique flower. Why should there be only roses in this world? What for? A grass flower or a dandelion flower has as much beauty, as much importance in the scheme of things. Why should there be only jasmine flowers, roses, or some other flower? So, the possibility is there of a change taking place which is sudden, not progressive. It has to happen in a very sudden and explosive way to break the whole thing.
U. G. Krishnamurti
Even when the problem of the access to technology is solved so that anyone who wishes can have access to technology, there still remains a problem. For example, just about anyone has access to a public library (at least in America). In that library we find the greatest, most profound, most illuminating literature that human beings have so far produced. Do most people read these books? Have you read Cervantes? Have you read the sonnets of Shakespeare? Have you read Hegel or Nietzsche? Their books are in the library, you have access to them, why have you not familiarized yourself with this literature? (Even if you have, I think you will agree that most people have not. Why?)
Neil Postman
One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic - hardware and technology - to establish background for the metaphysical, philosophical, and religious meanings later.
Arthur C. Clarke
Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other. This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technology tools help us to gather and disseminate information, but we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations.
I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I hope we've learnt something from the most barbaric century in history - the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation...
Arthur C. Clarke
