Technology has revolutionised the way we live and interact with one another, and as such it has inspired people to describe it in a very clever or emotive way. While some believe that technology has decreased our humanity, others view it as a way to bring the world closer together. For good or for evil, here are some of the best quotes by people who have reflected on the impact technology has had on our lives.
Technology is anything that wasn't around you when you were born. - Alan Kay (Computer Scientist)
All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness. - Mark Kennedy (Author)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic. - Arthur C. Clarke (Author)
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless. - Thomas Edison (Inventor)
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. The human spirit must prevail over technology. - Albert Einstein (Scientist)
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. - Elbert Hubbard (Author)
Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet. -Douglas Adams (Author)
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. - R. Buckminster Fuller (Inventor and Author)
I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. - Kurt Vonnegut (Author)
You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers. - Walter Lippmann (Author)
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. - Sydney Harris (Journalist)
If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner. - Omar Bradley (General, US Army)
The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art. - John Lasseter (Director)
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. - Arthur Schlesinger (Historian)
This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. - Don DeLillo (Author)
This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy. - Cory Doctorow (Journalist)
The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book. - Northrop Frye
It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button. - John Brunner (author)
Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head. - Jasper Fforde (novelist)
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. - Aldous Huxley
Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it. - Max Frisch
Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers. And they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers - which is why almost no technology every works. - John Cleese
The great myth of our times is that technology is communication. - Libby Larsen
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. - Pablo Picasso
TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public. - Douglas Coupland (Canadian novelist and artist)