#tech

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. ↗

— B. F. Skinner

#machines #men #problem #real #real problem

My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves. ↗

— Wendell Berry

#identity #leisure #technology #work #art

I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet -- with just one person inside even -- I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does. ↗

— Douglas Coupland

#consumer-culture #end-of-the-word #feudalism #technology #age

It was Noel Coward whose technique I envied and tried to emulate. I collected all his records and writing. ↗

— Kenneth Williams

#coward #emulate #envied #his #i

Most of the results of using technical bugging devices were of little importance for my service. It may have been different in counter-intelligence, where bugs in flats, etc., were used to obtain a lot of information about what counter-intelligence was interested in. ↗

— Markus Wolf

#been #bugging #bugs #counter-intelligence #devices

People often pulled into Scientology want to address personal problems in their life, and Scientology says we have technology that addresses these kinds of problems. Just focusing on the problems and trying to remedy them can be helpful. ↗

— Lawrence Wright

#focusing #helpful #into #just #kinds

So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology. ↗

— Daniel Yergin

#affairs #development #geology #ground #happens

The information age is so psychotic – without the cell phone and Internet, I would be drama free right now. ↗

— Lauren Barnholdt

#humor #information-age #technology #age

[...] 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

Yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong associated with a particular ti that is ... Western, and completely alien to us [the Chinese]. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have struggled to absorb the yong of technology without importing the Western ti. But it has been impossible. Just as our ancestors could not open our ports to the West without accepting the poison of opium, we could not open our lives to Western technology without taking in the Western ideas, which have been as a plague on our society. The result has been centuries of chaos. ↗

— Neal Stephenson

#history #society #technology #western #age