3,132 Quotes About Technology

It can be argued that the computer is humanity’s attempt to replicate the human brain. This is perhaps an unattainable goal. However, unattainable goals often lead to outstanding accomplishment.

We need machines, but more than that we need humans who know how to use those machines for the greater good.

An algorithm must be seen to be believed.

At the laboratory, Turing designed the first relatively complete electronic stored-program digital computer for code breaking in 1945. Darwin deemed it too ambitious, however, and after several years Turing left in disgust. When the laboratory finally built his design in 1950, it was the fastest computer in the world and, astonishingly, had the memory capacity of an early Macintosh built three decades later.

We now have immediate access to all possible facts. Which is almost the same as having none at all.

The sensitive person's hostility to the machine is in one sense unrealistic, because of the obvious fact that the machine has come to stay. But as an attitude of mind there is a great deal to be said for it. The machine has got to be accepted, but it is probably better to accept it rather as one accepts a drug - that is, grudgingly and suspiciously. Like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes.

Old robots are becoming more human and young humans are becoming more like robots.

Progress in science and technology is real, but it builds on past truths without rejecting them. Computers don’t have to be re-invented in order to keep getting better; innovations expand what they already do. Knowledge accumulates, so it can increase. Scientists and engineers know this, but artists, authors, and philosophers keep trying to start over from ground zero in the humanities. Thus, they don’t really progress—they become primitive.

What I did in my youth is hundreds of times easier today. Technology breeds crime.