#techno

I'm not sure he's wrong about automobiles," he said. "With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization -- that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men's souls. ↗

— Booth Tarkington

#technology #transportation #beauty

Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology. ↗

— Charles Petzold

#computer-science #programming #technology #beauty

Extrapolated, technology wants what life wants: Increasing efficiency Increasing opportunity Increasing emergence Increasing complexity Increasing diversity Increasing specialization Increasing ubiquity Increasing freedom Increasing mutualism Increasing beauty Increasing sentience Increasing structure Increasing evolvability ↗

— Kevin Kelly

#technology #beauty

Computers bootstrap their own offspring, grow so wise and incomprehensible that their communiqués assume the hallmarks of dementia: unfocused and irrelevant to the barely-intelligent creatures left behind. And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for, you can't understand their analysis and you can't verify their answers. You have to take their word on faith. ↗

— Peter Watts

#comprehension #data-analysis #post-modern-technofaith #wisdom #faith

You have to feel the mix and you have to feel the work and the sweet somehow which somebody is investing in that moment in the way that you can really feel the passion. ↗

— Tobias Thomas

#in #life #love #music #spekin

It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#wonder #men

Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#progress #technology #men

Men were primitive in the eyes of angel beings as men are primitive in the eyes of wilier races. ↗

— Toba Beta

#angel #primitive-men #wilier-races #men

I was impressed by the scene in Apollo 13 where the astronauts request confirmation of their calculations and several people at Mission Control dive for their slide rules. For several months after that, my standard response to statements like "We must implement multi-processor object-oriented Java-based client-server technologies immediately!" was "You know, FORTRAN and slide rules put men on the moon and got them back safely multiple times." Tended to shut them up, at least for a moment. ↗

— Matt Roberts

#nasa #slide-rules #technology #men

Making duplicate copies and computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving America a new sense of purpose. ↗

— Andy Rooney

#america #computer #copies #duplicate #even