Cajoling Technologies Quotes

Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued and which not. But without funding basic research, without supporting the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, our options become dangerously limited. ~ Carl Sagan

I started getting into Internet technologies and computers. I wasn't especially interested in being a musician, but I wound up finding my way back to being interested in music through computers. ~ Eric Avery

New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop. ~ Neil Postman

Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge. ~ Clayton M Christensen

The only way you get economic progress, real standards of living moving higher, is to have the savings of the society continuously invested in the cutting-edge technologies. And those technologies which are obsolescent get dropped out. ~ Alan Greenspan

New technologies will always demand and deserve careful navigation and difficult readjustments. But the weakening or de facto abolition of copyright will not merely roil the seas, it will drain them dry. Those who would pirate what you produce have developed an elaborate sophistry to convince you that they are your victim. They aren't. Fight back. ~ Mark Helprin

All the technologies mentioned and described in this book either existed at the time of its writing or were being developed in a clandestine way. ~ Pulkit Ahuja

That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: The most interesting applications turn up on a battlefield, or in a gallery. ~ William Gibson

This reduction of 'society' to a thin membrane of interactions between private individuals is presented today as the ambition of libertarians and free marketeers. But we should never forget that it was first and above all the dream of Jacobins, Bolsheviks and Nazis: if there is nothing that binds us together as a community or society, then we are utterly dependent upon the state. Governments that are too weak or discredited to act through their citizens are more likely to seek their ends by other means: by exhorting, cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them. The loss of social purpose articulated through public services actually increases the unrestrained powers of the over-mighty state. ~ Tony Judt

A genius separates himself from things which are not useful nor beneficial. While you are eager to try new technologies - A genius is thinking about how to invent something totally different that will be used by all. ~ Mwanandeke Kindembo

Before we choose our tools and technology, we must choose our dreams and values, for some technologies serve them, while others make them more unobtainable. ~ Marilyn Ferguson

Look for new enabling technologies that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done. ~ Aaron Levie

Everybody is so busy talking about 'Twittering' and talking about the new technologies and talking about this and that, but they don't talk about creativity. ~ George Lois

I think we are always right to worry about damaging consequences of new technologies even as we are empowered by them. History suggests we should not panic nor be too sanguine about cool new gizmos. There's a delicate balance. ~ James Gleick

Before starting work on this book, we had to ask ourselves a question what is science fiction? Seemingly simple, but in reality the answer was hard to formulate. This is the definition we settled upon:
Science fiction is a member of a group of fictional genres whose narrative drive depends upon events, technologies, societies, etc. that are impossible, unreal, or that are depicted as occurring at some time in the future, the past or in a world of secondary creation. These attributes vary widely in terms of actuality, likelihood, possibility and in the intent with which they are employed by the creator. The fundamental difference between science fiction and the other "fantastical genres" of fantasy and horror is this: the basis for the fiction is one of rationality. The sciences this rationality generates can be speculative, largely erroneous, or even impossible, but explanations are, nevertheless, generated through a materialistic worldview. The supernatural is not invoked. ~ Stephen Baxter

Research into manned spaceflight is shifting from low-Earth orbit to destinations much further away, like Mars and the asteroid belt. But society will have to invent many new technologies before it can plausibly send people to those distances. ~ Andy Weir

Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence. Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic defence is still only partially effective. But there is a patent defence at hand, - the defence of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. It is the same defence which peasants of the Middle Age used and which left its stamp on their character for centuries. To-day the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticise, he must not complain. Patience, humility, and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration, or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the Southern United States, is it not ra ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rulers - It's the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments - Too bad we've forgotten how to do it ~ Neal Stephenson

Who but a physicist, in the research lab or the corporation, could mix and match multiple ideas, models, technologies from different disciplines and thrive on change and new ideas ... ? ~ Robert Gibbs

Evolving technologies that allow economists to gather new types of data and to manipulate millions of data points are just one factor among several that are likely to transform the field in coming years. ~ Ben Bernanke

In our pursuit for the ultimate knowledge, the technologies we created eventually enslaved us, taking the last of our humanity before we even knew it was slipping away. ~ A.G. Riddle

When color TV arrived, it just sat there and you saw color. I've been to retail stores where there were no 3-D glasses at all and the 3-D images were all blurred. People were coming in and saying, 'I don't want to buy that.' There's a lot of marketing connected to introducing technologies and especially introducing new experiences. ~ Howard Stringer

Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data
i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion. ~ Jean Baudrillard

I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made. ~ Sherry Turkle

From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They are not infections, but infarctions; they do not follow from the negativity of what is immunologically foreign, but from an excess of positivity. Therefore, they elude all technologies and techniques that seek to combat what is alien. ~ Byung-Chul Han

For the ancient Greeks, who lacked our social media, the only way to achieve mass duplication of the details of one's life in the apprehension of others was to do something wondrously worth the telling. Our wondrous technologies might just save us all the personal bother. Kleos is a tweak away. ~ Rebecca Goldstein

As Paul Saffo, a forecaster of large-scale change at Discern Analytics, observes wisely, 'Change is never linear. Our expectations are linear, but new technologies come in S curves, so we routinely overestimate short-term change and underestimate long-term change.' Never mistake a clear view for a short distance, he adds. ~ Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran

And it was only when we invented the spear and began roaming the planet that technologies got complex and central to human survival. ~ Kirkpatrick Sale

Technology policy - whether we should have one and what form such a policy should take - was a core issue of the 1992 presidential campaign, and in February 1993 the Clinton administration confirmed that fostering new technologies will be a critical part of its agenda for redirecting the American economy. ~ Lewis M. Branscomb

Not only will the development of coal-to-liquid and environmentally friendly sequestration technologies increase our energy security, but these advancements will also help create better, higher-paying American jobs. ~ Peter Roskam

I thought I'd "missed the wave" of some technology or another. What I didn't appreciate at the time is that new technologies are a lot like buses - one comes every 15 minutes or so. As architects, we have to remember that we cannot stop change, but we can manage it. ~ Nathaniel Schutta

If you want to invest in early-stage technologies, putting a timeframe on it does behold you to Silicon Valley economics. You've got a certain time period where you have to make the money. And you have to invest that money whether you find good companies or not. ~ Bill Maris

They say an elephant never forgets. Well, you are not an elephant. Take notes, constantly. Save interesting thoughts, quotations, films, technologies ... the medium doesn't matter, so long as it inspires you. ~ Aaron Koblin