Science & Tech Quote by Jared Diamond

Diamond’s move here is to puncture the Silicon Valley bedtime story: that innovation is an unambiguous moral escalator. He isn’t saying “tech is bad.” He’s reminding you that “tech” is a bland word for a very sharp thing: power. And power, once amplified, doesn’t arrive with built-in governance, restraint, or a user manual for unintended consequences.

The line “as of tomorrow” does quiet rhetorical work. It drags the debate out of utopian long arcs and into the near-term reality where new tools hit the world faster than institutions can adapt. That’s Diamond’s signature move as an author of big-history cautionary tales: he treats progress less like a destiny and more like an ecological intervention. Introduce a new capability, and you’ve changed the selection pressures on societies, economies, even values.

The subtext is almost accusatory: our biggest crises aren’t “natural” or mysterious; they are the predictable side effects of scaling human reach. Climate change becomes, in this framing, not an anomaly but a design outcome of industrial power. Cybersecurity, misinformation, antibiotic resistance, extractive supply chains: these aren’t glitches in the system, they’re the bill that arrives when capacity outpaces foresight.

Diamond’s context matters. Writing in an era of climate anxiety and techno-optimist hype cycles, he’s pushing for a more adult cultural posture: tradeoff literacy. If technology is increased power, then the real question isn’t “Can we build it?” It’s “Who gets the power, who pays for it, and what limits keep tomorrow from becoming collateral damage?”