The Quotation IndexThe trusted reference for quotations and the sources behind them
Tag Tag Technological change
A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.
Andrew S. Grove Only the Paranoid Survive · 1996

Quotes

“People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.”

Bill Gates · The Road Ahead, 1995 · Primary source

“The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.”

William Gibson · The Science in Science Fiction, 1999 · Primary source

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Alan Kay · Learning vs. Teaching with Educational Technologies, 1983 · Primary source

“Ours is the commencement of a flying age, and I am happy to have popped into existence at a period so interesting.”

Amelia Earhart · 20 Hrs. 40 Min., 1928 · Primary source

“I don’t think AI’s impact will be as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution, but it certainly will be as big as the introduction of the PC.”

Bill Gates · The Risks of AI are Real but Manageable, 2023 · Primary source

“I encourage everyone to follow developments in AI as much as possible. It’s the most transformative innovation any of us will see in our lifetimes.”

Bill Gates · The Risks of AI are Real but Manageable, 2023 · Primary source

“Functionally oriented design of this kind has always been strongly influenced by technological development, and will continue to be so in the future. The Braun pocket radios that we designed at the end of the 1950s would not have been possible without the new transistor technology at the time. Transistors were not only far smaller than valves, they also required much less power. That meant that for the first time it was possible to make a radio receiver that you could literally put in your pocket.”

Dieter Rams · Less but better, 1995 · Primary source

“In technology, whatever can be done will be done.”

Andrew S. Grove · Only the Paranoid Survive, 1996 · Primary source

“The history of the development of technique, like the history of geographical expansion, has failed to provide us with a criterion of the growth of civilizations, but it does reveal a principle by which technical progress is governed, which may be described as a law of progressive simplification. The ponderous and bulky steam-engine with its elaborate ‘permanent way’ is replaced by the neat and handy internal-combustion engine which can take to the roads with the speed of a railway train and almost all the freedom of action of a pedestrian. Telegraphy with wires is replaced by telegraphy without wires. The incredibly complicated scripts of the Sinic and Egyptiac societies are replaced by the neat and handy Latin Alphabet.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · A Study of History, 1934-1961 · Primary source

Works

Arnold J. Toynbee · 1966
Change and Habit

An inquiry into whether humanity can change inherited habits and institutions fast enough to meet political, religious, demographic and technological pressures.

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William Gibson and others · 1999
The Science in Science Fiction

A 1999 radio discussion in which William Gibson, David Brin and Ann Simon consider how science informs science fiction, and whether fiction anticipates the future.

Read summary·Explore 1 quotes

Related Tags

Initiative 21 Adaptation 17 Agency 10 Personal computing 8 Product design 8 Social change 8 Efficiency 7 Progress 6 Preparedness 6 Innovation 6 Aviation 5 Braun 5 Risk awareness 4 Prediction 4 Technical progress 3 Simplification 3 Long-term thinking 3 Disruption 2 Creation 2 Modernity 1 Flight 1 Technological possibility 1 Civilisational development 1 Technology forecasting 1 Adoption 1 Strategic foresight 1 Labour market 1 Workplace adaptation 1 Industrial transformation 1 AI literacy 1 Public understanding 1 Public debate 1 Transistor technology 1 Miniaturisation 1 Future-making 1 Diffusion of innovation 1 Inequality 1 Early adopters 1 Human habits 1 World government 1 Human survival 1 Science fiction 1 Futurism 1 Talk of the Nation 1