The list includes classic quotes by Douglas Adams, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison, but also lesser-known thoughts that have been coined in the recent years.
A bit of reflection on how deeply we depend on technology is good for anyone, especially if you spend too much time in social media networks.
This list of the most insightful technology quotes was first published at our sister site Ebook Friendly. Some quotes are visualized to let you easier share them in social networks.
Cory Doctorow said once “This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.” The choice between using or not using technology. The challenge is to use it right.
The complete roundup of the best technology quotes
1
The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.
– Northrop Frye
2
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
– Thomas Edison
3
Our technology forces us to live mythically.
– Marshall McLuhan
4
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
– Elbert Hubbard
5
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
– Bill Gates
6
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
– Albert Einstein
7
Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.
– Douglas Adams
8
All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.
– Bill Watterson
9
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
– Douglas Adams
10
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
– R. Buckminster Fuller
11
It’s supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.
– John Brunner
12
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
13
I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.
– Kurt Vonnegut
14
Devices are not dangerous for literature. People can be dangerous for literature. People, for example, who do not read.
– László Krasznahorkai
15
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
– Aldous Huxley
16
The human spirit must prevail over technology.
– Albert Einstein
17
Old robots are becoming more human and young humans are becoming more like robots.
– Lorin Morgan-Richards
18
Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.
– Max Frisch
19
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 ever works.
– John Cleese
20
The great myth of our times is that technology is communication.
– Libby Larsen
21
Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable.
– Joseph Wood Krutch
22
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
– Pablo Picasso
23
TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.
– Douglas Coupland
24
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
25
The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science, or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction.
– Eckhart Tolle
26
We now expect more from technology and less from each other.
– Sherry Turkle
27
First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII – and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.
– Douglas Adams
28
Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.
– Clay Shirky
29
Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.
– Laurie Anderson
30
Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.
– Sir Arthur C. Clarke
31
Ethics change with technology.
– Larry Niven
32
So much technology, so little talent.
– Vernor Vinge
33
The role of the artist today is to defend feeling against the machine.
– Marty Rubin
34
Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
– Harold Abelson
35
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand.
– Archibald Putt
36
For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
– Alice Kahn
37
As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer.
– James Gleick
38
The ultimate promise of technology is to make us master of a world that we command by the push of a button.
– Volker Grassmuck
39
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
– Sydney J. Harris
40
I might love my e-reader, but I’d never pass up the chance to browse real books.
– Nichole Chase
41
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.
– Stewart Brand
42
Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
– Jeff Pesis
43
Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is.
– Robert M. Pirsig
44
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
– B.F. Skinner
45
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
– Mitchell Kapor
46
If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
– Omar N. Bradley
47
Technology has to be invented or adopted.
– Jared Diamond
48
We don’t need nukes. We have the internet.
– Alice Minium
49
Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.
– Carrie Snow
50
Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.
– Sam Ewing
51
The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.
– John Lasseter
52
Computers are heaven-sent when they work and hell-spawn when they don’t.
– Dani Harper
53
All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.
– Tom Hodgkinson
54
Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.
– Christian Lous Lange
55
Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.
– Alan Kay
56
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.
– Arthur M. Schlesinger
57
This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.
– Cory Doctorow
58
Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.
– Steve Jobs
59
Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.
– Patti Smith
60
Leaving society to algorithms will be like leaving healthcare to stethoscopes.
– Abhijit Naskar
61
Technology is teaching us to be human again.
– Simon Mainwaring
62
Books don’t need batteries.
– Nadine Gordimer
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