#invention

The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading. ↗

— Barry Commoner

#atomic #atomic bombs #bombs #consequence #fact

The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#competing #contact #cultural #elsewhere #faster

Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation. ↗

— Max Ernst

#decorative #discovery #either #every #every time

As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. ↗

— Michel Foucault

#date #easily #end #invention #man

By focusing on the interior of a speaker's larynx and using infrared, he was able to convert the visible vibrations of the vocal cords into sound of fair quality, but that did not satisfy him. He worked for a while on vibrations picked up from panes of glass in windows and on framed pictures, and he experimented briefly with the diaphragms in speaker systems, intercoms and telephones. He kept on into October without stopping, and finally achieved a device that would give tinny but recognizable sound from any vibrating surface - a wall, a floor, even the speaker's own cheek or forehead. ↗

— Damon Knight

#inventions #science-fiction #sounds #vibrations #experience

Architecture is invention. ↗

— Oscar Niemeyer

#invention

The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of one's own, in one's relation to the tool, the material and the colors. ↗

— Emil Nolde

#art #artist #chain #colors #continuous

Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing. ↗

— Duane Michals

#art #invention #nothing #photography #surfaces

I am honored to be able to serve GM at this critical juncture and take part in its reinvention. ↗

— Edward Whitacre, Jr.

#am #critical #gm #honored #i

[...] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#inventions #technology #transport #age