Lapham’s Quarterly

Machines 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.

All attempts to adapt our ethical code to our situation in the technological age have failed.

Doing research on the web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.

The ability to store our data externally helps us imagine that our time is limitless, our space infinite.

The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

All technologies should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.

If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet.

If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.