Technology & Innovation: Technology Quotes

"The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that"

Tom Clancy, Novelist

"There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a telephone. Technology is just a tool. People use tools to improve their lives"

Tom Clancy, Novelist

"There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs"

Tom Clancy, Novelist

"Technological considerations are of great importance to architecture and cities in the informational society"

Kenzo Tange, Architect

"You know, when we were kids, we had to go to a theater to see a movie. And then television came in and you had to wait until midnight to see the one you wanted to see. Now, all you've got to do is go to a store and buy it and you can watch it whenever you want!"

John Zorn, Composer

"My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy"

Marc Andreessen, Businessman

"Ten to 20 years out, driving your car will be viewed as equivalently immoral as smoking cigarettes around other people is today"

Marc Andreessen, Businessman

"Health care and education, in my view, are next up for fundamental software-based transformation"

Marc Andreessen, Businessman

"Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming"

Marc Andreessen, Businessman

"Innovation accelerates and compounds"

Marc Andreessen, Businessman

"Any new technology tends to go through a 25-year adoption cycle"

Marc Andreessen, Businessman

"I'm very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening, like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement"

Brian Eno, Musician

"I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets"

Francis Ford Coppola, Director

"My greatest concern is that the emergence of this technology without the appropriate public attention and international controls could lead to an unstable arms race"

K. Eric Drexler, Scientist

"Any powerful technology can be abused"

K. Eric Drexler, Scientist

"We must learn to balance the material wonders of technology with the spiritual demands of our human race"

John Naisbitt, Businessman

"Why should someone have to retrain themselves to use a new application that does the same basic thing as the old application, just because something as trivial as the operating system changed out from under them?"

Jamie Zawinski, Scientist

"Mostly I use the O2 as an X terminal, however, running my apps on Linux and displaying remotely"

Jamie Zawinski, Scientist

"I use a really simple calendar program on my computer"

Jamie Zawinski, Scientist

"My work at MIT had focused on what we could build in space once we had inexpensive space transportation and industrial facilities in orbit. And this led to various sorts of work in space development"

K. Eric Drexler, Scientist

"An international race in the relevant technologies is getting under way at this point, not necessarily with an understanding of where that race leads in the long run, but strongly motivated by the short-term payoffs"

K. Eric Drexler, Scientist

"And when the time comes to replace the O2 I have today, maybe my next machine will run Linux"

Jamie Zawinski, Scientist

"If you take all the factories in the world today, they could make all the parts necessary to build more factories like themselves. So, in a sense, we have a self-replicating industrial system today, but it would take a tremendous effort to copy what we already have"

K. Eric Drexler, Scientist

"The other advantage is that in conventional manufacturing processes, it takes a long time for a factory to produce an amount of product equal to its own weight. With molecular machines, the time required would be something more like a minute"

K. Eric Drexler, Scientist

"Likewise nanotechnology will, once it gets under way, depend on the tools we have then and our ability to use them, and not on the steps that got us there"

K. Eric Drexler, Scientist

"If you're a large corporation, you can afford to pay the money to register patents, but if you're an individual like me, you can't"

Larry Wall, Author

"Nearly every country in the world is now becoming industrialized as rapidly as it can"

John Boyd Orr, Politician

"Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science"

Larry Wall, Author

"The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about - they weren't putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home"

Jeff Bezos, Businessman

"The personal contact is a personal thing. The fact that some people don't know their neighbors, I don't think that technology is at fault. You don't lose anything with technology. You gain other avenues of understanding"

John Warnock, Scientist

"Measured in time of transport and communication, the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago"

John Boyd Orr, Politician

"A lot of the work in United States is highly critical of technology. I'm using 15,000 watts of power and 18 different pieces of electronic equipment to say that"

Laurie Anderson, Musician

"The Apple has the fewest bells and whistles. It has simple sound and few graphics special effects. In a way, that is a weakness because markets for the other machines are getting bigger"

Bill Budge, Businessman

"The power of the computer is starting to spread"

Bill Budge, Businessman

"On the robot kit, I can choose very boring parts or I can choose exciting and interesting parts. That is a reflection of my personality and the kinds of things I am interested in"

Bill Budge, Businessman

"Within my own life, I read all the beloved novels by lamps of vegetable oil; I saw the Standard Oil invading my own village, I saw gas lamps in the Chinese shops in Shanghai; and I saw their elimination by electric lights"

Hu Shih, Philosopher

"Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public"

Ludwig von Mises, Economist

"The sanitary and mechanical age we are now entering makes up for the mercy it grants to our sense of smell by the ferocity with which it assails our sense of hearing"

Havelock Ellis, Psychologist

"Knowing how people will use something is essential"

Donald Norman, Scientist

"Everyday people are not very good designers"

Donald Norman, Scientist

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