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Quotes about technology

114 quotes from 61 people

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The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
EDEdsger W. Dijkstra1930–2002How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)
- Clever Jabs
- Computers
You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers.
Walter Lippmann1889–1974A Preface to Politics (1913), Ch. I: “Routineer and Inventor”, p. 30.
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Personal Recollections (1981), p. 96
- Music
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.
EDEdsger W. Dijkstra1930–2002How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)
- Clever Jabs
- Computers
There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.
H. G. Wells1866–1946A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 3, sect. 8
- Beauty
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
EDEdsger W. Dijkstra1930–2002How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)
- Clever Jabs
- Computers
The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological — technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science.
Stephen Hawking1942–2018From Hawking’s article A Brief History of Relativity, in Time magazine (31 December 1999)
- Change
- Science
He who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Bk. I, ch. 5.
- Democracy
We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
Steve Jobs1955–2011Interview in Macworld magazine (February 2004)
- Computers
- Television
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
Edward R. Murrow1908–1965On receiving the “Family of Man” Award from the Protestant Council of the City of New York (28 October 1964)
- Truth & Lies
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.
Arthur C. Clarke1917–2008The Exploration of Space (1951), p. 111
- Science
The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers — and thermonuclear weapons.
Arthur C. Clarke1917–2008Foreword to The Collected Stories (June 2000)
- Change
The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.
Edward R. Murrow1908–1965On receiving the “Family of Man” Award (1964)
- Computers
- Talking
Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all.
Albert Einstein1879–1955Why Socialism? (1949)
- Work
Ours is the commencement of a flying age, and I am happy to have popped into existence at a period so interesting.
Amelia Earhart1897–193920 Hrs., 40 Min. (1928), p. 180