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Technology

1. Technology is our word for something that doesn’t work yet.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) British author. Sunday Times (London) (June 2000)

 

2. Today’s portable net technology is at the Kitty Hawk stage. But with things moving at Internet speed, we can expect Concorde to be along shortly.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) British author. Sunday Times (London) (June 2000)

 

3. The classic development questions need to be reformulated for a 21st century economy…Will the poor continue to be left behind, will the wealth of information be hoarded by an elite?

  1. Y. Amoako, Ghanaian economist and executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Speech, Africa Development Forum, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (October 25, 1999)

 

4. Fantasy romps.

Anonymous. Referring to virtual reality. Quoted in Goldfinger (Robert Heller; 1998)

 

5. Official designs are aggressively neuter, The Puritan work of an eyeless computer.

John Betjeman (1906-84) British poet. The Newest Bath Guide (1974)

 

6. Science, engineering and technology are fundamental drivers in the economy of the future, providing the foundation for business growth and overall improvement in the quality of life.

Mark Birrell (b.1958) Australian politician. “Investing in Innovation,” Business Links (July 1999)

 

7. Technology is so much fun but we can down in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

Daniel J. Boorstin (b.1914) U.S. Pulitzer-prize-winning historian. New York Times (1983)

 

8. Dotcom will become in our corporate language like Inc. or Co. or Corp.-a generic way of describing a company, in this case a company that does business on the Internet.

Clive Chajet (b.1937) U.S. management consultant. “Names Outlast Stocks of Internet Firms,” New Jersey Star-Ledger (Beth Fitzgerald; 1999)

 

9. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke (b.1917) British science fiction writer. The Lost Worlds of 2001 (1972)

 

10. If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls Royce would cost $100, get a million per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.

Robert X. Cringley, U.S. journalist and author. Infoworld (March 6, 1989)

 

11. For many businesses, the Internet is still a technology in search of a strategy.

Mary J. Cronin (b.1947) U.S. business authot. Attrib.

 

12. Technology will move so fast that unfortunately, or fortunately for me, you will be required to buy a new phone quite often.

Charles Dunstone (b.1964) British business executive and founder of Carphone Warehouse. Management Today (August 1999)

 

13. It’s like if you want to buy a car. Would you want to get an engine from BMW a chassis from Jaguar, windscreen wipers from Ford?

Larry D. Ellison (b.1945) U.S. C.E.O. of Oracle Corporation. Referring to integrated software suites, Forbes (October 2000)

 

14. One might be tempted to think that technological change is just a straight, upward trajectory…a very simple message would be to be prepared to lead as we have in the 1990s, but at a much faster pace. That would be very bad advice, indeed.

William T. Esrey (b.1940) U.S. telecommunications entrepreneur, chairman and C.E.O. of Sprint. “Leadership in the Next Century,” The Conference Board Challenge to Business: Industry Leaders Speak Their Minds (Peter Krass and Richard E. Cavanagh, eds.; 2000)

 

15. Clearly, there is great potential to improve efficiency using Internet-based e-commerce strategies such as electronic marketplaces and business-to-business supply chain management. But no one really knows how big those productivity gains will be, how long they will take to be realized, and who will be the ultimate beneficiaries.

Roger W. Ferguson, JR. (b.1951) U.S. economist, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. “Conversation with Leaders of the ‘New Economy’,” speech, New Economy Forum, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, California (May 9, 2000)

 

16. The Internet has attracted the most attention as a symbol of the new economy. It clearly improves communication, collapsing time and space, but are we overstating the potential benefits of this one, admittedly stunning, innovation? Does the Internet have the potential to continuously improve business processes, as some enthusiasts argue, and if it does, what conditions are required to achieve that?

Roger W. Ferguson, JR. (b.1951) U.S. economist, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. “Conversation with Leaders of the ‘New Economy’,” speech, New Economy Forum, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, California (May 9, 2000)

 

17. People were skeptical about the new technology. They wanted it to be de-risked.

Jon Florsheim (b.1960) British Internet entrepreneur. Marketing (August 2000)

 

18. Broadband is like a narcotic. Once you have it, you won’t be able to give it up.

Lynn Forrester (b.1955) U.S. business executive. Sunday Times (London) (June 2000)

 

19. Technology-the knack of so arranging the world that we need not experience it.

Max Frisch (1911-91) Swiss author. Homo Faber (1957)

 

20. Automation does not make optimism obsolete.

Keith Funston (1910-92) U.S. president of New York Stock Exchange. Address, George Peabody College for Teachers, Vanderbilt University, Nashville (March 11, 1964)

 

21. The imperatives of technology and organization…are what determines the shape of economic society.

  1. K. Galbraith (b.1908) U.S. economist and diplomat. The New Industrial State (1967)

 

22. The web workstyle will change the boundaries of business…because the ability to use the electronic marketplace to reach outside…will allow you to do things that you would have done internally in the past. Technology is driving the trend for the average-sized organization to be much smaller.

Bill Gates (b.1955) U.S. entrepreneur, chairman and C.E.O. of Microsoft. Speech, Manhattan Institute, New York City (December 2, 1998)

 

23. The world of business is still very, very paper-oriented…Although they may use personal computers…most of the information they work with ends up on paper…Well, all of that will go away. It will simply be a series of bits that are transmitted and then automatically categorized.

Bill Gates (b.1955) U.S. entrepreneur, chairman and C.E.O. of Microsoft. Speech, Manhattan Institute, New York City (December 2, 1998)

 

24. It is important to step back from an industry that is full of people announcing new widgets every day-faster widgets, smaller widgets, more widgets.

Lou Gerstner (b.1942) U.S. chairman and C.E.O. of IBM. Fortune (November 1993)

 

25. A new organization of matter is building up: the technosphere or world of material goods and technological devices: or the surrogate world.

Edward Goldsmith (b.1928) British ecologist. The Great U-Turn (1988)

 

26. Technologies such as electronic mail are not just part and parcel of the way European companies operate. It is largely incidental to the way managers work.

Andrew S. Grove (b.1936) U.S. entrepreneur, author and chairman of Intel Corporation. Financial Times (London) (January 1997)

 

27. We live in an age in which the pace of technological change is pulsating ever faster, causing waves that spread outward toward all industries. This increased rate of change will have an impact on you, no matter what you do for a living. It will bring new competition from new ways of doing things from corners that you don’t expect.

Andrew S. Grove (b.1936) U.S. entrepreneur, author and chairman of Intel Corporation. Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company and Career (1996), Preface

 

28. The lines are drawn between old-economy companies, making things and profits  and newcomers with exciting prospects, new ideas…but as yet making few profits.

James Edward Hanson (b.1922) British business executive and entrepreneur. Web site (2000)

 

29. The trouble is that all-encompassing though information technology may be, it will always convey facts and numbers…what it does not convey is perception, belief and motivation.

John Harvey-Jones (b.1924) British management adviser, author and former chairman of ICI. Managing to Survive (1993)

 

30. The thing with high-tech is that you always end up using scissors.

David Hockney (b.1937) British artist. Observer (London (July 1994)

 

31. We bet the company on that basic technology and, in 23 years, nobody else has been able to match it.

Masaru Ibuka (1908-97) Japanese cofounder and chief adviser of Sony Corporation. Fortune (February 1992)

 

32. Apple and Pixar are the same in that…they both deliver a product that has immense technology underpinnings and yet they both strive to say you don’t need to know anything about this technology in order to use it.

Steve Jobs (b.1955) U.S. entrepreneur, cofounder and C.E.O. of Apple Computer Company, and C.E.O. of Pixar. Quoted in “Steve’s Two Jobs,” Time (Michael Krantz; October 18, 1999)

 

33. Apple has always been, and I hope it will always be, one of the premier bridges between mere mortals and this very difficult technology.

Steve Jobs (b.1955) U.S. entrepreneur, cofounder and C.E.O. of Apple Computer Company, and C.E.O. of Pixar. Quoted in “Steve’s Two Jobs,” Time (Michael Krantz; October 18, 1999)

 

34. Technology has nothing to do with the corporate world. I don’t see technology and the corporate world as being necessarily intertwined, any more than art and the corporate world are intertwined.

Steve Jobs (b.1955) U.S. entrepreneur, cofounder and C.E.O. of Apple Computer Company, and C.E.O. of Pixar. Quoted in “Steve’s Two Jobs,” Time (Michael Krantz; October 18, 1999)

 

35. An important technology first creates a problem and then solves it.

Alan Kay (b.1940) U.S. entrepreneur and personal computer developer. Quoted in Reengineering the Corporation (Michael Hammer and James Champy; 1993)

 

36. The last man standing in an increasingly unhealthy industry.

Ashok Kumar (b.1964) Indian investment analyst. Referring to the performance of the IT industry. Forbes (September 2000)

 

37. Since the worker has been reduced to a machine, the machine can confront him as a competitor.

Karl Marx (1818-83) German political and economic philosopher. 1844. Quoted in Karl Marx (Francis Wheen; 1999)

 

38. Gutenberg made everyone a reader. Xerox makes everybody a publisher.

Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) Canadian sociologist and author. Guardian (London) (June 1977)

 

39. When this circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?

Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) Canadian sociologist and author. The Medium is the Message (1967)

 

40. The acceleration of technological progress has created an urgent need for a counter ballast-for high-touch experience.

John Naisbitt (b.1929?) U.S. business executive and author. Megatrends (1982)

 

41. It is almost genetic in its nature, in that each generation will become more digital than the preceding one.

Nicholas Negroponte (b.1943) U.S. academic, cofounder and director of MIT Media Laboratory. Being Digital (1995)

 

42. Like a force of nature, the digital age cannot be denied or stopped. It has four very powerful qualities that will result in its ultimate triumph: decentralizing, globalizing, harmonizing and empowering.

Nicholas Negroponte (b.1943) U.S. academic, cofounder and director of MIT Media Laboratory. Being Digital (1995)

 

43. Machines need to talk easily to one another in order to better serve people.

Nicholas Negroponte (b.1943) U.S. academic, cofounder and director of MIT Media Laboratory. Being Digital (1995)

 

44. One way to look at the future being digital is to ask if the quality of one medium can be transposed to another.

Nicholas Negroponte (b.1943) U.S. academic, cofounder and director of MIT Media Laboratory. Being Digital (1995)

 

45. We believe technology in itself does not make a business. Useful applications that utilize technology do.

Sandy Oh (b.1971) Malaysian investment banker. Business Week (September 2000)

 

46. Thanks to lateral technology, a one-person global business is both technically feasible and a practical reality.

  1. W. Rostow (b.1916) U.S. economist. Megatrends (1982)

 

47. High tech is embedded in the texture of industrial history; it needs to be planned into existence.

Theodore Roszak (1933-81) U.S. historian, writer and editor. The Cult of Information (1994)

 

48. If computerized information services have any natural place in a democratic society, it is in the public loibrary.

Theodore Roszak (1933-81) U.S. historian, writer and editor. The Cult of Information (1994)

 

49. The hard-pressed weavers of Northern England who rallied around the mythical Heneral Ludd appear to have had no grudge against technology in and of itself; their grievance was with those who used machines to lower wages or eliminate obs.

Theodore Roszak (1933-81) U.S. historian, writer and editor. The Cult of Information (1994)

 

50. If the technocratic class often invokes technology, it is because these inanimate objects can take on a trajectory of their own and so cover for the manager’s inability to give leadership.

John Ralston Saul (b.1947) Canadian writer. The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

 

51. The technology of mass production is inherently violent, ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable resources and stultifying for the human person.

  1. F. Schumacher (1911-77) British economist and conservationist. Small is Beautiful (1973)

 

52. Anybody who runs a successful high tech company has to be an eternal optimist, has to be able to take big risks.

John Sculley (b.1939) U.S. partner of Sculley Brothers, former president of Pepsi, and C.E.O. of Apple Computers. Fortune (July 1993)

 

53. If we hadn’t put a man on the moon, there wouldn’t be a Silicon Valley today.

John Sculley (b.1939) U.S. partner of Sculley Brothers, former president of Pepsi, and C.E.O. of Apple Computers. U.S. News & World Report (1992)

 

54. At the beginning of the 21st century six new technologies-micro-electronics, computers, telecommunications, new man-made materials, robotics and biotechnology-are interacting to create a new and very different economic world.

Lester Thurow (b.1938) U.S. economist, management theorist and writer. Building Wealth: New Rules for Individuals, Companies and Countries in a Knowledge-Based Economy (1999), Prologue

 

55. The possession of technological know-how and the adoption of suitable strategies ultimately will determine the firm’s ability to survive and indeed flourish in China in the long run.

Rosalie L. Tung (b.1948) Canadian academic and business educator. International Management in China: Cross-cultural Issues (Jan Selmer, ed.; 1998)

 

56. Like the anthropologist returning home from a foreign culture, the voyager in virtuality can return home to a real world better equipped to understand its artifices.

Sherry Turkle (b.1948) U.S. sociologist. Life on the Screen (1995)

 

57. We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on one million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

Robert Wilensky (b.1951) U.S. academic. Mail on Sunday (February 1997)

 

58. Everyone basically told us, “Software is a stupid thing to invest in because the assets walk out the door at night.”

Ann Winblad (b.1953) U.S. venture capitalist. “The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business,” Fortune (Patricia Sellers and Cora Daniels; October 1999)

 

59. If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) U.S. architect. Referring to advances in technology. New York Times Magazine (1953)

 

60. Satellites are no respecters of ideology.

Walter Wriston (b.1919) U.S. banker. The Twilight of Sovereignty (1992)