"Some people think technology has the answers"
About this Quote
Mitnick’s line lands like a polite shrug with a knife tucked behind it. “Some people think” is doing the work of a raised eyebrow: he’s not arguing with a named opponent, he’s indicting a whole cultural reflex without granting it the dignity of debate. And the phrase “technology has the answers” isn’t really about gadgets. It’s about the modern faith that tools can substitute for judgment, ethics, and attention to human behavior.
The subtext is classic Mitnick: the real vulnerability is rarely the machine. It’s the person using it. Coming from a figure who became famous not just for hacking systems but for hacking assumptions, the line reads as a warning against magical thinking in a world that keeps buying “solutions.” Password managers, biometric locks, AI-driven monitoring - they’re framed as cures, when they’re often just new surfaces for old problems: trust, incentives, laziness, fear. You can patch software; you can’t patch a workplace that rewards speed over scrutiny or a culture that treats privacy like an inconvenience.
Context matters because Mitnick is a celebrity precisely because he embodies the paradox: the folk devil of “tech gone wrong” who later became a public educator about security. That arc gives him authority to puncture Silicon Valley optimism without sounding like a Luddite. The line is small, but it’s a pressure point: it exposes how easily “innovation” becomes a secular religion, and how badly we want an external device to absolve us from doing the harder internal work.
The subtext is classic Mitnick: the real vulnerability is rarely the machine. It’s the person using it. Coming from a figure who became famous not just for hacking systems but for hacking assumptions, the line reads as a warning against magical thinking in a world that keeps buying “solutions.” Password managers, biometric locks, AI-driven monitoring - they’re framed as cures, when they’re often just new surfaces for old problems: trust, incentives, laziness, fear. You can patch software; you can’t patch a workplace that rewards speed over scrutiny or a culture that treats privacy like an inconvenience.
Context matters because Mitnick is a celebrity precisely because he embodies the paradox: the folk devil of “tech gone wrong” who later became a public educator about security. That arc gives him authority to puncture Silicon Valley optimism without sounding like a Luddite. The line is small, but it’s a pressure point: it exposes how easily “innovation” becomes a secular religion, and how badly we want an external device to absolve us from doing the harder internal work.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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