Quotes about Technology

Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible.  The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

We align ourselves not with the ever-expanding human monoculture, nor with the abstract vision of a global economy, but with the far more sustainable prospect of a regionally diverse and interdependent web of largely self-sufficient communities – a multiplicity of technologically sophisticated, vernacular cultures tuned to the structure and pulse of particular places. We know well that if humankind is to flourish without destroying the living world that sustains us, then we must grow out of our adolescent aspiration to encompass and control all that is. Sooner or later, we know, our technological ambition will begin to scale itself down, allowing itself to be oriented by the distinct needs of specific bioregions. Sooner or later, that is, technological civilization will accept the invitation of gravity and settle back into the land, its political and economic structures diversifying into the varied contours and rhythms of a more-than-human earth.

The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.

Technology can be a wonderful boon to humankind, but sometimes we abuse it in ways that prevent us from really participating in life. For example, I have a BlackBerry phone. My original thinking was that this would free me from my computer and allow me to stay connected. Yes, it does allow me to stay connected electronically, but it also makes me disconnected from what I should really be doing—being present.

Talk of generosity, of information that wants to be free, and of virtual communities is often dismissed by businesspeople as youthful new age idealism. It may be idealistic but it is also the only sane way to launch a commercial economy in the emerging space.

Technology is only one of many forces driving human history, and seldom the most important.  Politics and religion, economics and ideology, military and cultural rivalries are at least as important as technology.  Technology only gives us tools.  Human desires and institutions decide how we use them.

I think technology advanced faster than anticipated. In that whirlwind, a lot of companies didn't survive. The reason we have done well is because, even in that whirlwind, we kept heads-down focused on the customers. All the metrics that we can track about customers have improved every year.

I believe this country stands at a crossroads. For decades, innovation has been the engine of prosperity in this country. Now, economic progress depends more than ever on innovation. And the potential for technology innovation to improve lives has never been greater.... If we make the right choices, the United States can remain the global innovation leader that it is today.

These four policy prescriptions – strengthening educational opportunities, revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, increasing federal funding for basic scientific research, and providing incentives for private-sector R&D – should in my view be top priorities as Congress and the Administration consider how to maintain the nation's leadership in science, technology, and innovation.

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce.

"The price of temporarily suspending our disbelief while reading novels and viewing films is small.  The price of suspending our disbelief (turning off our critical thinking) in matters of politics, economics, technology and religion is immense.

We might sometimes reflect and recall that the purpose of all our science, technology, industry, manufacturing, commerce, and finance is celebration, planetary celebration.  This is what moves the stars through the heavens and the earth through its seasons.  The final norm of judgment concerning the success or failure of our technologies is the extent to which they enable us to participate more fully in this grand festival.

Anybody can use science and technology without fundamentally altering his own frame of mind which governs how they are used.

Silicon Valley, “the largest legal creation of wealth in history,” was built largely by unprofessional amateurs using math, sand, and the institutions of freedom.  The Soviet Union had the greatest mathematicians on earth, and plenty of sand, but without the institutions of freedom their brilliant mathematicians were not empowered to create
those devices that are changing the world.

Who Ever finds the new, new thing and makes it happens, wins!

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

"Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved."

We think of Craigslist as a form of Social Media.

We provide a simple service that is mostly free and we leave money in the community, instead of taking it away. Shared values, nothing fancy, treating people like we want to be treated.

What works on the net works for people in general. The net has very little to do with technology, what matters is how people use the technology.

Perhaps the most important point is to ensure that science never becomes divorced from the basic human feeling of empathy with our fellow beings. Just as one's fingers can function only in relation to the palm, so scientists must remain aware of their connection to society at large. Science is vitally important, but it is only one finger of the hand of humanity, and its greatest potential can be actualized only so long as we are careful to remember this. Oherwise, we risk losing our sense of priorities. Humanity may end up serving the interests of scientific progress rather than the other way around. Science and technology are powerful tools, but we must decide how best to use them. What matters above all is the motivation that governs the use of science and technology, in which ideally heart and mind are united.

Within the short space of my own lifetime, the impact of science and technology on humanity has been tremendous. Although my own interest in science began with curiosity about a world, foreign to me at that time, governed by technology, it was not very long before the colossal significance of science for humanity as a whole dawned on me---especially after I came into exile in 1959. There is almost no area of human life today that is not touched by the effects of science and technology. Yet are we clear about the place of science in the totality of human life---what exactly it should do and by what it should be goverened? This last point is critical because unless the direction of science is guided by a consciously ethical motivation, especially compassion, its effects may fail to bring benefit. They may indeed cause great harm.

"When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself. They seldom do. Engineers cannot seem to get this through their heads. These countermeasures are all based on too narrow a definition of what is wrong. Human measures and countermeasures proceed from limited scientific truth and judgment. A true solution can never come about in this way."

Mastery of Intention is a deeply personal process that always occurs in the present. No technology, guru or savior, however advanced, can do for us what only a commitment to evolving and operating out of our own divine consciousness and physiology can achieve. The choice is ours in every now whether to give away our power to something or someone outside ourselves, or to summon the courage, integrity and impeccability to return home by walking the challenging but ultimately enlightening Black Road of Spirit.

As we gradually learn to harness the optimal computing capacity of matter, our intelligence will spread through the universe at (or exceeding) the speed of light, eventually leading to a sublime, universe wide awakening.

“(Martin) Heidegger notes that the origin of the word “technology” comes from the Greek word techne, and this word was applied not only to technology, but to art, and artistic technique as well.  'Once there was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful was also called techne.'  He found this to be a numinous correspondence, and considered that, in art, the 'saving power' capable of confronting the abyss of the technological enframing might be found.

If art contains a saving power, it is not in the atomized artworks produced by individual subjects, but in a deeper collective vision that sees the world as a work of art, one that is already, as (Sri) Nisargadatta (Maharaj) and (Terrence) McKenna suggest, perfect in its 'satisfying all-at-onceness'.'  Instead of envisioning an ultimately boring 'technological singularity,' we might be better served by considering an evolution of technique, of skillful means, aimed at this world, as it is now.  Technology might find its proper place in our lives if we experienced such a shift in perspective–in a society oriented around technique, we might find that we desired far less gadgetry.  We might start to prefer slowness to speed, subtlety and complexity to products aimed at standardized mind.  Rather than projecting the spiritual quest and the search for the good life onto futuristic A.I.s,  we could actually take the time to fulfill those goals, here and now, in the present company of our friends and lovers.

Part of the problem seems embedded in the basic concept of a concrescence or singularity, which compacts our possibilities rather than expands them.  The notion of a technological singularity reflects our culture's obsessive rationality, reducing qualitative aspects of being to quantifiable factors, and imposing abstract systems over complex variables.  Instead of a technological singularity, we might reorient our thinking toward a more desirable multiplicity of technique.  Technique is erotic in essence; it is what Glenn Gould or Thelonious Monk expresses through the piano–the interplay between learned skill and quantum improvisation that is the stuff of genius.  Technique embraces the now-ness of our living world; technology throws us into endless insatiation.”

Mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

An omni-linked world populated with intelligent artifacts will bring sweeping changes to virtually every facet of modern life – from science and education to industry and commerce – leaving no segment of society unaffected by its advance.

The greatest cost of the specialization of technological life -- and out of which all other damages are birthed -- is arguably our separation from the practical and enriching sense of ourselves as embodied beings. When

we are alienated from the wisdom of the body, our lives become theoretical and abstract, and we are distanced from the direct, felt sense of living.

"What we lost when we stopped writing letters;  you can't reread a phone-call."

Continually adapt your focus and develop a technology toolset to help, not hinder you.

Seek out and capitalize on as many time-saving technology advances and techniques as you can.