Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power ... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
- Octavio Paz (b. 1914), Mexican author.
"The Channel and the Signs," Alternating Current, 1967.
What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve the creation of still more intelligent entities-on a still-shorter time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past: Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals. From the human point of view, this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control.
- The Coming Technological Singularity by Vernor Vinge, 1993.
Whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.
- New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative by Paul Goodman, 1970.
It's a truism in technological development that no silver lining comes without its cloud.
- Bruce Sterling on the "National Research and Education Network"
A speech before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, April 29, 1993
Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet.
Technology inspires art, and art challenges technology.
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.
Technology will definitely solve all our problems, but in the process it will create brand-new ones. But that's OK because the most you can expect from life is to get to solve better and better problems.
...modern technology is a major evolutionary transition - as important as when the first cells came together to form multicellular organisms. It would be astonishing if that occurred without disrupting existing life.
