Industrialism is the religion with “the machine” as the god going to answer all the prayers. Communism and capitalism were just competing sects.
—Dora Russell, 1983Quotes
The ability to store our data externally helps us imagine that our time is limitless, our space infinite.
—Carina Chocano, 2012Machines do not run in order to enable men to live, but we resign ourselves to feeding men in order that they may serve the machines.
—Simone Weil, 1934You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
—Walter Lippmann, 1913As usual, what we call “progress” is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
—Havelock Ellis, 1914For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
—Richard Feynman, 1986Refrigerators and television sets, or even rockets sent to the moon, do not change man into God.
—Czesław Miłosz, 1960The art of invention grows young with the things invented.
—Francis Bacon, 1605’Tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1600You can steal a lot more with a computer than with a gun.
—Gina Smith, 1997Civilization, a much-abused word, stands for a high matter quite apart from telephones and electric lights.
—Edith Hamilton, 1930The civilized man has built a coach but has lost the use of his feet.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet.
—Charles M. Allen, 1967