Quotes & Sayings About The Evil Of Technology

The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical igenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability. — David McCullough

Despite my emphasis on technology, I do not view laws as inherently evil. My goals are political ones, even if my techniques are not. The only way to fundamentally succeed is by changing existing laws. If I rejected all help from the political arena I would inevitably fail. — Bram Cohen

And if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain. — Edward Abbey

We must not confuse religion with God, or technology with science. Religion stands in relationship to God as technology does in relation to science. Both the conduct of religion and the pursuit of technology are capable of leading mankind into evil; but both can prompt great good. — Robert Winston

Let's say that the God the Christians pray to is real. He actually exists. But this God is the same as the one that the Jews pray to and the same as the one that the Muslims pray to and whatever other religions are praying to a God, He is the one. One God with many faces. Most of these religions contain the myth of the Anti-Christ, a being who will come one day and lead the world astray, lead the world to a place of sin and evil. Who could this Anti-Christ be ... Consider the God with many faces. How many wars have been fought in His Name? How many people have been beaten, jailed, and maimed to prove His points. Think of the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Salem, and the Sudan. All of these tragedies carried out in His name. Why is it accepted that He is a force for good? If we were to look for the Anti-Christ just by his accomplishments, wouldn't we clearly suspect the being who is the cause of so much woe? — S.T. Rogers

It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil. — Robert M. Pirsig

The idea that human-transforming technology that mingles the dna of natural and synthetic beings and merges man with machines could somehow be used or even inspired by evil supernaturalism to foment destruction within the material world is for some people so exotic as to be inconceivable. Yet nothing should be more fundamentally clear, as students of — Thomas Horn

People view us and our vampires as abominations," Ghastek said. "They call the undead inhuman, not realizing the irony: only humans are capable of inhumanity. Four thousand years of technology, with magic shrinking to a mere trickle before the Shift, yet the world was just as evil then as it is now. It's not vampires or werewolves who committed the worst atrocities, but average people. They are the serial killers, the child rapists, the inquisitors, the witch hunters, the perpetrators of monstrous deeds. The shackles on my wall are the symbol of humanity's capacity for cruelty. I keep them to remind myself that I must fear those who fear me. — Ilona Andrews

Any new technology, if it's used by evil people, bad things can happen. But that's more a question of the politics of the technology. — Geoffrey Hinton

We have seen and do see the type of evil that is within human civilization, and the Holocaust took place in European history during an advanced state of technology and form of civilization, only to become an event in that history that questioned what civilization actually means. — Laszlo Nemes

The placebo effect has an evil twin known as the nocebo effect. This is when the expectation of harm or pain becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, even in the absence of any known physical effect. One candidate for the nocebo effect is the discomfort some people report experiencing after using mobile phones. Scientists have failed to identify a physical cause, so it's possible the adverse effects are caused by negative beliefs about the technology. — Christian Jarrett

On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.
On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.
Values are subjective
but sexism and racism are really evil.
Technology is bad and destructive
and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.
Tolerance is good and dominance is bad
but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows. — Stephen Hicks

I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the 'evil Microsoft empire.' — Linus Torvalds

. . . [T]o live in an inspired condition, to know truth, to be free, to love another, to consummate existence, to abide with death in clarity of consciousness - without which, racing and conniving to evade death, the spirit holds its breath and hopes to be immortal because it does not live - is no longer a rarefied project. Just as machinery has embodied ideas of good, so the technology of destruction has also acquired a metaphysical character. The practical questions have thus become the ultimate questions as well. Annihilation is no longer a metaphor. Good and Evil are real. The inspired condition is therefore no visionary matter. It is not reserved for gods, kings, poets, priests, shrines, but belongs to mankind and to all of existence. — Saul Bellow

Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems. — Linus Torvalds

We saw a pale echo of what is now possible in 1990-1991, when Saddam Hussein, the autocrat of Iraq, made a sudden transition in the American consciousness from an obscure near-ally - granted commodities, high technology, weaponry, and even satellite intelligence data - to a slavering monster menacing the world. I am not myself an admirer of Mr. Hussein, but it was striking how quickly he could be brought from someone almost no American had heard of into the incarnation of evil. These days the apparatus for generating indignation is busy elsewhere. How confident are we that the power to drive and determine public opinion will always reside in responsible hands? — Carl Sagan

It [RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE] has definitely been the biggest learning curve for me. As an actor, whenever I start on a movie, different things that I perform in ask for different skill sets. And this one is definitely the technological side of it. You have to hit your mark. You can't weave back and forth because your nose is jutting at you in 3-D. It's really been learning how to do that and also it's exciting to be on the forefront of this technology. — Ali Larter

Every time there's a new tool, whether it's Internet or cell phones or anything else, all these things can be used for good or evil. Technology is neutral; it depends on how it's used. — Rick Smolan

[Internet] technology, like anything else that mankind creates is a tool and that tool can be used for good or for evil, like a light saber. Technology is supposed to bring people together, streamline things and make life easier and in a lot of ways it does that. However, technology can also disconnect you from other people and break down the social network, the real social network of family and friends and interpersonal communication, and isolate people, make them feel alone, make them feel small. So it's a tool that needs to be used correctly. — Rainn Wilson

New technology is not good or evil in and of itself. It's all about how people choose to use it. — David Wong

Information technology alone cannot provide us an absolute shield against its evil twin disinformation technology. Our only protection is law, and that protection is available to us only if legitimate governments have the power to govern. — Paul Starr

Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you — Carl Sagan

I've learned to distinguish between the greatness of God and the inexcusable evil that has been done by those professing his name. And so I do not deduce [as Christopher Hitchens does] that God is not great, and that religion poisons everything. After all, if I failed to distinguish between the genius of Einstein and the abuse of his science to create weapons of mass destruction, I might be tempted to say science is not great, and technology poisons everything. — John Lennox

The struggle for power had reached a new stage; it was fought with scientific formulas. The weapons vanished in the abyss like fleeting images, like pictures one throws into the fire ...
When new models were displayed to the masses at the great parades on Red Square in Moscow or elsewhere, the crowds stood in reverent silence and then broke into jubilant shouts of triumph ...
Though the display was continual, in this silence and these shouts something evil, old as time, manifested itself in man, who is an outsmarter and setter of traps. Invisible, Cain and Tubalcain marched past in the parade of phantoms. — Ernst Junger

It is time to stop debating whether the Internet is an effective tool for political expression and instead to address the much more urgent question of how digital technology can be structured, governed, and used to maximize the good and minimize the evil. — Rebecca MacKinnon

I'm not against the concept of Creators/God, I'm against the antiquated beliefs that there are evil things, which are merely axioms we concocted out of our inadequacy as mortal beings, primitive brain, and underdeveloped technology. — Andreas Laurencius

It'll turn me into a weapon,' I say, my voice suddenly loud.

'All you got to do is curl your hands into fists and you turn into a weapon,' says Jim. 'Your body is just another tool. This technology changes nothing; it only amplifies. You decide how to use your tools. Whether to do good or evil. — Daniel H. Wilson

I'm all in favor of looking deeply into as much as we possibly can. I'm not afraid of knowledge ... With all new technology, weapons inevitably emerge ... Evil comes out of the human heart. It doesn't come out of nature. — Richard Preston

The ability of one to affect many is scaling exponentially - and it's scaling for good and it's scaling for evil. — Marc Goodman

The fundamental problem is that every technology embeds the ideologies of its creators! Who made the Internet? The military! The Internet is the product of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency! We call it DARPA for short! Who worked for DARPA? DARPA was a bunch of men! Not a single woman worked on the underlying technologies that fuel our digital universe! Men are the shit of the world and all of our political systems and philosophies were created and devised without the input of women! Half of the world's population lives beneath systems of government and technological innovation into which their gender had zero input! Democracy is a bullshit ideology that a bunch of slaveholding Greek men constructed between rounds of beating their wives! All the presumed ideologies of men were taken for inescapable actualities and designed into the Internet! Packet switching is an incredible evil! — Jarett Kobek