Cons Of Technology Quotes

We don't normally think of it as such, but writing is a technology. ~ Ted Chiang

Style still matters, for at least three reasons. First, it ensures that writers will get their message across, sparing readers from squandering their precious moments on earth deciphering opaque prose. When the effort fails, the result can be calamitous-as Strunk and White put it, "death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram." Governments and corporations have found that small improvements in clarity can prevent vast amounts of error, frustration, and waste, and many countries have recently made clear language the law of the land.

Second, style earns trust. If readers can see that a writer cares about consistency and accuracy in her prose, they will be reassured that the writer cares about those virtues in conduct they cannot see as easily. Here is how one technology executive explains why he rejects job applications filled with errors of grammar and punctuation: "If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use it's, then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with." And if that isn't enough to get you to brush up your prose, consider the discovery of the dating site OkCupid that sloppy grammar and spelling in a profile are "huge turn-offs." As one client said, "If you're trying to date a woman, I don't expect flowery Jane Austen pros ~ Steven Pinker

Technology will make available to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised ... techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

I can't say I'm particularly happy about all the spam and the viruses and the equivalent that we see on the Net, but I think technology can deal with many of the problems that we're now seeing, whether it's filtering or whatever, and laws may help a lot. ~ Vint Cerf

Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom. ~ Murray Bookchin

Perhaps the worst software technology of all time was the use of physical lines of code [for metrics]. Continued use of this approach, in the author's opinion, should be considered professional malpractice. ~ Capers Jones

I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father's respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always trying to build things. ~ James Cameron

By some estimates, the oil you recently discovered off the shores of Brazil could amount to twice the reserves we have in the United States. We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers. ~ Barack Obama

I really believe we in the music industry can work together to find a way to bond technology with integrity and just really hope we can teach the younger generation the value of investment in music rather than the ephemeral consumption of it. ~ Taylor Swift

Consistency, say some, is the sign of a small mind, but it's a real virtue with high-power technology. Having lots of the same devices out in the field lets us compile a record of experience. ~ James R. Chiles

The embrace of a new technology by ordinary people leads inevitably to its embrace by people of malign intent. ~ Charles C. Mann

I'm not really gadget oriented. I'm not into technology or computers. I'm not good at interfacing with that sort of gear. ~ Nicolas Cage

Many medical students, like most American patients, confuse science and technology. They think that what it means to be a scientific doctor is to bring to bear the maximum amount of technology on any given patient. And this makes them dangerous. ~ Alice Dreger

Yes, there are many ways to collect content, but in my experience - the best and most authentic content is one which you speak when you are in moments of flow. You can use any recording device. Do not let the lack of understanding technology slow you down. Ask someone how to turn the damn thing on and record yourself. Remember, you are on a mission to complete the levels within and win a better life for yourself and your family. You owe it to them to overcome these obstacles and to see your way through, not to create excuses. ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

That night I dreamt about the roses laid at the wrong feet - the feet of the nurse. Each bit of the dream was like a hyperlink. I pressed on one, wanting answers, and it took me to another. I could never get to the meaning at the bottom of any of the bits. When I reached for the petals of the roses, I was touching a metal seatbelt buckle in a coach, driving by night through a remote place, with a band of mist running parallel to the glass I leant against. ~ Olivia Sudjic

I've always been interested with the idea of technology and the way technology affects our ability to communicate - our ability to have a rewarding experience with technology versus a kind of dehumanizing experience with technology. ~ Marco Brambilla

[Flaubert] didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together. ~ Julian Barnes

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch

AIR was born from thinking about how rich Internet applications would play out over time and what new pieces of technology would be in demand for these to go to their next generation. ~ Kevin Lynch

Intelligence is the source of technology. If we can use technology to improve intelligence, that closes the loop and potentially creates a positive feedback cycle. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

I think we're experiencing a resurgence of fantasy-type conventions in general because people want to get out around kindred spirits. Cons are a great place to meet people you've been tweeting and FB'ing with, and since you've had an online relationship with them, it's not like meeting for the first time. ~ Mel Odom

There are many things that have stayed consistent. But the biggest change, of course, is technology, the way it's used, the way films are shot, the format that they're shot in, and the way films, of course, are edited. It's very different than it was in the past. ~ Howard Shore

Reading is a respite from the restlessness of technology, but it's not only that. It's how I reset and recharge. It's how I escape, but it's also how I engage. And reading should spur further engagement. ~ Will Schwalbe

Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire. ~ Abbie Hoffman

Ideally, content should be shared, mixed, mashed, and reposted - it wants to flow through the Internet like water. This was the point of RSS, after all - a technology that has actually been declared dead more often than the lowly display banner. ~ John Battelle

Technology is important to Art because it connects creativity with innovation and the spirit of inventiveness. Whether we are using technology to create our art, or to share our art, it challenges artists to explore new realms of aesthetic experience and cultural relevance. But, on the other hand, Art is important to Technology for the most important reason of all. Art gives Technology its humanity. And our humanity is the driving force behind every new technology we design and every product we manufacture. We are all makers. Without creativity, we don't make anything. If we don't make anything, we don't progress. ~ Kim Chestney

If you ask me, the hypothetical zenith of gaming technology is direct neural interface - no body to hamper you and your brain is in whatever you want it to be in. Plus it leads to existential uncertainty, which could be entertaining. ~ Yahtzee Croshaw

Automation and technology would be a great boon if it were creative, if there were more leisure, more opportunity to engage in raising a family, providing guidance to the young, all the stuff we say we need. America will work if we're all in it together. It'll work when there's a shared sense of destiny. It can be done! ~ Jerry Brown

But unvented - ahh! One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up, one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new when one works in the prehistoric medium of wool with needles. The products of science and technology may be new, and some of them are quite horrid, but knitting? In knitting there are ancient possibilities; the earth is enriched with the dust of the millions of knitters who have held wool and needles since the beginning of sheep. Seamless sweaters and one-row buttonholes; knitted hems and phoney seams - it is unthinkable that these have, in mankind's history, remained undiscovered and unknitted. One likes to believe that there is memory in the fingers; memory undeveloped, but still alive. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann

In the ensuing chapters, we will look in some detail at particular manifestations of the modern scientific ideology and the false paths down which it has led us. We will consider how biological determinism has been used to explain and justify inequalities within and between societies and to claim that those inequalities can never be changed. We will see how a theory of human nature has been developed using Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection to claim that social organization is also unchangeable because it is natural. We will see how problems of health and disease have been located within the individual so that the individual becomes a problem for society to cope with rather than society becoming a problem for the individual. And we will see how simple economic relationships masquerading as facts of nature can drive the entire direction of biological research and technology. ~ Richard C. Lewontin

The computer focuses ruthlessly on things that can be represented in numbers. In so doing, it seduces people into thinking that other aspects of knowledge are either unreal or unimportant. The computer treats reason as an instrument for achieving things, not for contemplating things. It narrows dramatically what we know and intended by reason. ~ George Friedman

Trying to exhaust himself, Vaughan devised an endless almanac of terrifying wounds and insane collisions: The lungs of elderly men punctured by door-handles; the chests of young women impaled on steering-columns; the cheek of handsome youths torn on the chromium latches of quarter-lights. To Vaughan, these wounds formed the key to a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology. The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind, like exhibits in the museum of a slaughterhouse. ~ J.G. Ballard

What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a 'spark of life.' It is information, words, instructions ... If you want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology. ~ Richard Dawkins

Even as technology becomes increasingly critical to the way we live our lives, power our world and defend our shores, the United States has allowed the production of minerals crucial in the creation of these advanced products to slide. ~ Hank Johnson

The enemy is noise. By noise I mean not simply the noise of technology, the noise of money or advertising and promotion, the noise of the media, the noise of miseducation, but the terrible excitement and distraction generated by the crises of modern life. Mind, I don't say that philistinism is gone. It is not. It has found many disguises, some highly artistic and peculiarly insidious. But the noise of life is the great threat. Contributing to it are real and unreal issues, ideologies, rationalizations, errors, delusions, nonsituations that look real, nonquestions demanding consideration, opinions, analyses in the press, on the air, expertise, inside dope, factional disagreement, official rhetoric, information - in short, the sounds of the public sphere, the din of politics, the turbulence and agitation that set in about 1914 and have now reached an intolerable volume. ~ Saul Bellow

The long, slow turn of world-time as the geologist has known it, and the invisibly moving hour hand of evolution perceived only yesterday by the biologist, have given way in the human realm to a fantastically accelerated social evolution induced by industrial technology. So fast does this change progress that a growing child strives to master the institutional customs of a society which, compared with the pace of past history, compresses centuries of change into his lifetime. I myself, like others of my generation, was born in an age which has already perished. At my death I will look my last upon a nation which, save for some linguistic continuity, will seem increasingly alien and remote. It will be as though I peered upon my youth through misty centuries. I will not be merely old; I will be a genuine fossil embedded in onrushing man-made time before my actual death. ~ Loren Eiseley

But all the things Science had promised us hadn't come to pass. Disease was still a problem. Starvation was still a problem. Violence and crime and war were still problems. In spite of the advance of technology, things just hadn't changed the way everyone had hoped and thought they would. ~ Jim Butcher

The insanity of the collective egoic mind, amplified by science and technology, is rapidly taking our species to the brink of disaster. Evolve or die: that is our only choice now. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Again, there is psychological risk in the robotic moment. Logan's comment about talking with the AIBO to "get thoughts out" suggests using technology to know oneself better. But it also suggests a fantasy in which we cheapen the notion of companionship to a baseline of "interacting with something." We reduce relationship and come to see this reduction as the norm. ~ Sherry Turkle

P15 - Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system to the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new "Culture of Silence". ~ Paulo Freire

NAFTA recognizes the reality of today's economy - globalization and technology. Our future is not in competing at the low-level wage job; it is in creating high-wage, new technology jobs based on our skills and our productivity. ~ John F. Kerry

Radio - and perhaps airplanes, and then of course, the atom bomb - was the preeminent technology of the first half of the 20th century. It was how the Third Reich controlled its citizens, spread lies, and disseminated fear. ~ Anthony Doerr

I've always been a proponent of the idea that technology doesn't matter to game design. The example I always like to point out is 'Tetris,' one of the greatest games ever made. ~ Tim Schafer

The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations. There can be few who believe that in the coming year a record as great as, say, the Stooges' Funhouse or Sly Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On will be released. Still less do we expect the kind of ruptures brought about by The Beatles or disco. The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of previous periods and you will quickly be accused of 'nostalgia'. But the reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago suggests that the current moment is in the grip of a formal nostalgia, of which more shortly.

It is not that nothing happened in the period when the slow cancellation of the future set in. On the contrary, those thirty years has been a time of massive, traumatic change. In the UK, the election of Margaret Thatcher had brought to an end the uneasy compromises of the so-called postwar social consensus. Thatcher's neoliberal programme in politics was reinforced by a transnational restructuring of the capitalist economy. The shift into so-called Post-Fordism – with globalization, ubiquitous computerization and the casualisation of labour – resulted in a complete transformation in the way that work and leisure were organised. In the last ten to fifteen years, meanwhile, the internet and mobile telecommunications technology have altered the ~ Mark Fisher

Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread – these are two lows of nature. If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of this. ~ Yann Martel

A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That's how the patent office defines it. That's an invention. ~ Dean Kamen

Typographic style is founded not on any one technology of typesetting or printing, but on the primitive yet subtle craft of writing. ~ Robert Bringhurst