Robert J. Szczerba is the CEO of X Tech Ventures, an innovative company focused on solving some of today’s most challenging problems through the integration of technologies from multiple, diverse domains. This post originally appeared on Forbes.
The advancement of technology generally evokes a range of emotions in people from all walks of life. Some view technology as a great evil that slowly diminishes our humanity, while others view it as a way to bring the world closer together and to help solve some of our greatest challenges. Regardless of your view, almost everyone has a favorite quote or two about the impact that technology has on our lives. These are my 20 favorites.
1) Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born. – Alan Kay (Computer Scientist)
2) Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic. – Arthur C. Clarke (Author)
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3) All of the biggest technological inventions created by man – the airplane, the automobile, the computer – says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness. – Mark Kennedy (Author)
4) Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless. – Thomas Edison (Inventor)
5) It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. – Albert Einstein (Scientist)
6) Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. – Pablo Picasso (Artist)
7) One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. – Elbert Hubbard (Author)
8) Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet. –Douglas Adams (Author)
9) Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. –R. Buckminster Fuller (Inventor and Author)
10) I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. – Kurt Vonnegut (Author)
11) The human spirit must prevail over technology. – Albert Einstein (Scientist)
12) The great myth of our times is that technology is communication. – Libby Larsen (Composer)
13) You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers. – Walter Lippmann (Author)
14) We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. – Douglas Adams (Author)
15) Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable. – Joseph Krutch (Writer)
16) This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. – Don DeLillo (Author)
17) The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. – Sydney Harris (Journalist)
18) If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner. – Omar Bradley (General, US Army)
19) The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art. – John Lasseter (Director)
20) Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. – Arthur Schlesinger (Historian)
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