Life Technologies Quotes & Sayings

Technology, as it becomes more sophisticated and mature, eventually gets displaced by newer or more effective technology," Raffaelli told me, describing the traditional path of creative destruction. "But there are these odd circumstances where there's an alternative path, where these dead technologies get repositioned for new life. — David Sax

Information and communication technologies have changed the way of life completely. Nowadays, many people reach for their smart phones and/or turn their computers on as soon as they wake up. They look at the news on social networks and check e-mails, before they get dressed or have breakfast. — Eraldo Banovac

There are few aspects of everyday life that aren't touched by the technologies developed for space travel. — Scott Kelly

Obviously technologies that are sustainable are a logical first step to creating a just society, one that doesn't trample life in all its forms, whether it's other humans or other life forms on the earth, one that acknowledges that we're all sharing the space and that there needs to be room for every living thing somewhere. — John Lindsay

Many Years before without the New Technologies Life was more Peaceful and Simpler. — Jan Jansen

These days, I find it harder to listen to really trebly lo-fi recordings. At the same time, without the old limitations, these new technologies require self control. So much of the software seems to be about correcting imperfections - quantizing, Auto-tune - and, to me, those corrections can really drain the life out of a performance. — Michael Dumontier

Today's Darwinists will tell you that the task of humanity is to take charge of evolution. But 'humanity' is only a name for a ragtag animal with no capacity to take charge of anything. By destabilizing the climate, it is making the planet less hospitable to human life. By developing new technologies of mass communication and warfare, it has set in motion processes of evolution that may end up displacing it. — John N. Gray

We tend not to use the biggest resource in healthcare - the patients themselves. So I'm trying to figure out possible uses for digital technologies like Facebook but also real-life social networks to improve healthcare provision. — Lucien Engelen

Being silenced by our technologies - in a way, "cured of talking." These silences - often in the presence of our children - have led to a crisis of empathy that has diminished us at home, at work, and in public life. I've said that the remedy, most simply, is a talking cure. This book is my case for conversation. — Sherry Turkle

New information and communications technologies can improve the quality of life for people with disabilities, but only if such technologies are designed from the beginning so that everyone can use them. Given the explosive growth in the use of the World Wide Web for publishing, electronic commerce, lifelong learning and the delivery of government services, it is vital that the Web be accessible to everyone. — William J. Clinton

Today social justice represents one of the most serious challenges to the conscience of the world. The abyss between those who are within the world 'order' and those who are excluded is widening day by day. The use of leading-edge technologies has made it possible to accumulate wealth in a way that is fantastic but perverse because it is unjustly distributed. Twenty-percent of humankind control eighty percent of all means of life. That fact creates a dangerous imbalance in the movement of history. — Leonardo Boff

If we look at the life cycle of technologies, we see an early period of over-enthusiasm, then a 'bust' when disillusionment sets in, followed by the real revolution. — Ray Kurzweil

These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish. This is a fight not only for the meaning of our individual lives, but for the meaning of our life together. — Bill McKibben

If there is a central theme to what I called "a peaceful warrior's approach to living," and to The Four Purposes of Life, it is that there may be innumerable techniques or methods one can learn (from the Eastern spiritual cultures and from the Western psychological tradition), but that above and beyond all these technologies waits the school of everyday life. — Dan Millman

Incantations for Muggles:
The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life — Danah Boyd

I've been gratified to see over the twenty or so years of my writing life the West become less of a colony of the East; maybe new technologies and too much travel undermine the idea of provinciality. — Rebecca Solnit

A peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable world. It is a world in which the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms. — Neil Postman

The very technologies that were supposed to free up our time seem instead to be consuming it, tacking hours onto our already extended days. The very interconnectedness of life in a global networked economy that creates so many opportunities also makes all our decisions more complex, crucial, even fragile. — Sally Helgesen

I only want to work with transparent ideas and accessible technologies that 'spotlight' the individual's role in society through creativity. I try to live an open-source life. — Chris Jordan

New media technologies can open up new opportunities for self-expression. But yoking one's identity too closely to certain characteristics of these technologies - and lacking the time, opportunity, or inclination to explore life and lives offline - may result in an impoverished sense of self. — Gardner Howard

The widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are 'left over.' However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural
and last but not least
political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed. — Johannes Grenzfurthner

With our technologies
ones of incalcuable power: earth-restoring, planet preserving
we can rediscover an intimacy, a mutuality with the natural world, that is not primitive (though based in part on fear), but knowing. It might even be possible to relearn a life of awe. And inhabit the landscape without violation. With the least violation. — Janet Kauffman

The opportunity presented by the climate crisis is not only the opportunity for new and better jobs, new technologies, new opportunities for profit, and a higher quality of life. It gives us an opportunity to experience something that few generations ever have the privilege of knowing: a common moral purpose compelling enough to lift us above our limitations and motivate us to set aside some of the bickering to which we as human beings are naturally vulnerable. — Al Gore

Instead of asking, "WHAT should we do to compete?" the questions must be asked, "WHY did we start doing WHAT we're doing in the first place, and WHAT can we do to bring our cause to life considering all the technologies and market opportunities available today? — Simon Sinek

I love using the latest technologies to make life more efficient, but I don't want to advocate that technology replaces the need to get together and enjoy human connections with people. — Maynard Webb

I'm convinced that the catastrophes of the next two decades will be so vast as to bring about a world where life, if it survives, will be far simpler - and the technologies, too. Then we will have come full circle to something like life on the savanna. — Kirkpatrick Sale

We do not need to invent sustainable human communities. We can learn from societies that have lived sustainably for centuries. We can also model communities after nature's ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its technologies and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life. — Fritjof Capra

I think the real test of psychedelics is what you do with them when you're not on them, what kind of culture you build, what kind of art, what kind of technologies ... What's lacking in the Western mind is the sense of connectivity and relatedness to the rest of life, the atmosphere, the ecosystem, the past, our children's future. If we were feeling those things we would not be practicing culture as we are. — Terence McKenna

Space exploration must be undertaken not only out of simple human curiosity but also to further the survival of the species. The twentieth century has seen the unprecedented development and proliferation of magnificent technologies. Many of them, through design, ignorance, or misuse, are capable of destroying life as well as enhancing it. Space exploration alone holds the promise of eventual escape from a dying planet, provided we wisely manage our resources in the meantime and actually survive that long. — Edgar Mitchell

That is certainly the point: when the human species was born, on the African savanna, life was pretty good; we could live in harmony with the rest of nature, and that's what I've been calling Eden. The only technologies that humans devised for some 2 million years were fire and the hand ax. That's all. Eden didn't need anything more — Kirkpatrick Sale

Teens are desperate to have access to and make sense of public life; understanding the technologies that enable publics is just par for the course. — Danah Boyd

The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between ... Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued-that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more production, or faster-paced ... I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness. — Rebecca Solnit

We might sometimes reflect and recall that the purpose of all our science, technology, industry, manufacturing, commerce, and finance is celebration, planetary celebration. This is what moves the stars through the heavens and the earth through its seasons. The final norm of judgment concerning the success or failure of our technologies is the extent to which they enable us to participate more fully in this grand festival. — Thomas Berry

We fine-tune our moods with pharmaceuticals and classic rock. Craft our meals around our allergies and ideologies. Customize our bodies with cross training, with ink and metal, with surgery and wearable technologies. We can choose a vehicle to express our hipness or hostility. We can move to a neighborhood that matches our social values, find a news outlet that mirrors our politics, create a social network that "likes" everything we say or post. With each transaction and upgrade, each choice and click, life moves closer to us, and the world becomes our world. — Paul Roberts

At root, I think that any given technology (think nuclear power, gunpowder, the written word ... ) has the potential to improve our lives, wound it, and also to create unexpected accidents. It's not the technology that's the problem, it's us, the users. However angelic or demonic, or thoughtful or thoughtless we happen to be is then amplified by our technologies. — Paolo Bacigalupi

What's different here is that we have now technologies that allow these life science companies to bypass classical breeding. That's what makes it both powerful and exciting. — Jeremy Rifkin

We can make these changes if we are willing to unite and stand together. The road to a sustainable future is clear, and the technologies are ready and cost-efficient. The only thing holding us back is the lack of political will. And with the crisis at hand, this is no excuse for failing to fight for the future we want for generations to come. We must move forward fearlessly to build a mass movement with the political power necessary to create a truly sustainable energy future. We must do this - it's a matter of life and death. — Wenonah Hauter

To live only for some unknown future is superficial. It is like climbing a mountain to reach the peak without experiencing its sides. The sides of the mountain sustain life, not the peak. This is where things grow, experience is gained, and technologies are mastered. The importance of the peak lies only in the fact that it defines the sides. So I went on towards the top, but always experiencing the sides. I had a long way to go but I was in no hurry. I went in little steps - just one step after another - but each step towards the top. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

For the ancient Greeks, who lacked our social media, the only way to achieve mass duplication of the details of one's life in the apprehension of others was to do something wondrously worth the telling. Our wondrous technologies might just save us all the personal bother. Kleos is a tweak away. — Rebecca Goldstein

Because of new technologies, new wealth, new conditions of domestic life and of international relations, unprecedented criteria and issues are coming up for national decision. — Herman Kahn

Our quality of life, and perhaps even our survival, depends on how we choose to manage ourselves in relation to the technologies we create. — Ilchi Lee

Technologies of easy travel give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere, - in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home? — Nathaniel Hawthorne

With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories. — Lucy Walker

For centuries, cultures throughout the world have used indigenous technologies to navigate life's complexities. From navigator-priests in Micronesia to mystics in India, vast sums of knowledge are available if we but recognize it. — Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey

Those who advocate euthanasia have capitalized on people's confusion, ambivalence and even fear about the use of modern life-prolonging technologies. Being able to choose the time and manner of one's death, without regard to what is chosen is presented as the ultimate freedom. — Pope John Paul II

Whatever prestige the bourgeoisie may today be willing to grant to fragmentary or deliberately retrograde artistic tentatives, creation can now be nothing less than a synthesis aiming at the construction of entire atmospheres and styles of life ... A unitary urbanism - the synthesis we call for, incorporating arts and technologies - must be created in accordance with new values of life, values which we now need to distinguish and disseminate ... — Gil J Wolman

Why has time disappeared in our culture? How is it that after decades of inventions and new technologies devoted to saving time and labor, the result is that there is no time left? We are a time-poor society; we are temporally impoverished. And there is no issue, no aspect of human life, that exceeds this in importance. The destruction of time is literally the destruction of life. — Jacob Needleman

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth. — Stephen Bayley

These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I'm not downplaying that. — Steve Jobs

The aim of the Internet and its associated technologies was to "liberate" humanity from the tasks - making things, learning things, remembering things - that had previously given meaning to life and thus had constituted life. Now it seemed as if the only task that meant anything was search-engine optimization. — Jonathan Franzen

I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes. — Daniel Quinn

I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies. — Ivan Illich

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. — Mark Weiser

One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems - on assemblages of people or technologies or both - and among our most profound difficulties is making them work. — Atul Gawande

What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects. — Joseph Campbell

A deep analysis judges technology morally - from its conception and intention to the totality of its consequences, knowing that all "raw materials" once were someone's home or sustenance, that extraction and manufacture at industrial scale reduce landscapes and their human beings, that distribution, employment, and disposal of technologies change lives in unpredictable ways. — Stephanie Mills

This country is without hope. Even its garbage is clean, its trade lubricated, its traffic pacified. The latent, the lacteal, the lethal - life is so liquid, the signs and messages are so liquid, the bodies and the cars are so fluid, the hair so blond, and the soft technologies so luxuriant, that a European dreams of death and murder, of suicide motels, of orgies and cannibalism to counteract the perfection of the ocean, of the light, of that insane ease of life, to counteract the hyperreality of everything here. — Jean Baudrillard

If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival. — N. Katherine Hayles