Technology

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"...I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

"It makes sense to examine Plato and pottery together in order to understand the Greek world, Descartes and the mechanical clock together in order to understand Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the same way, it makes sense to regard the computer as a technological paradigm for the science, the philosophy, even the art of the coming generation."

"The clock has been the center of Western technology since its invention in the Middle Ages. Computer technology too finds it indispensable, although it has changed the clock from a mechanical device to a wholly electronic one."

"In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists."

"I have bought this wonderful machine- a computer. Now I am rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine- it seems to me to be an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and no mercy."

"Trust The Computer. The Computer is your friend."

"Starting when computer technology first emerged during World War II and continuing into the 1960s, women made up most of the computing workforce. By 1970, however, women only accounted for 13.6% of bachelor's in computer science graduates. In 1984 that number rose to 37%, but it has since declined to 18% -- around the same time personal computers started showing up in homes. According to NPR, personal computers were marketed almost exclusively to men and families were more likely to buy computers for boys than girls."

"To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now, large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world—increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward."

"This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynman called it a disease. I fear he is right."

"If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result."

"The simple fact is that without supporting directives or a mechanism for feedback, security is defined differently by each person and verified by no one. There is no metric for compliance with a "culture", and a "culture of security" is overridden by a culture of "get the job done" every time. If there are rules, write them down. If technology is put in place to implement or monitor the rules, write that down too. If people break the rules, follow up. If the rules prevent legitimate business from getting done, change them. It's that simple."

"It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do? So I have often made the hypotheses that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities."

"Spock: Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it or him."

""So computers are tools of the devil?" thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't him."

"Where a calculator like the ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1½ tons."

"What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking — there's the real danger."

"Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind."

"These machines have no common sense; they have not yet learned to "think," and they do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer."

"The Analytical Engine has no pretentions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform."

"Dare to be gorgeous and unique. But don't ever be cryptic or otherwise unfathomable. Make it unforgettably great."

"The Joker: Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen?"

"The reality is that future cyber warfare will likely resemble medieval siege warfare – as critical infrastructure and vital services to a city's population are shut-down and locked-out as a result of a ransomware attack."

"Today's computers are not even close to a 4-year-old human in their ability to see, talk, move, or use common sense. One reason, of course, is sheer computing power. It has been estimated that the information processing capacity of even the most powerful supercomputer is equal to the nervous system of a snail—a tiny fraction of the power available to the supercomputer inside [our] skull."

"But if these machines were ingenious, what shall we think of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage? What shall we think of an engine of wood and metal which can not only compute astronomical and navigation tables to any given extent, but render the exactitude of its operations mathematically certain through its power of correcting its possible errors? What shall we think of a machine which can not only accomplish all this, but actually print off its elaborate results, when obtained, without the slightest intervention of the intellect of man?"

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

"An adversary capable of implanting the right virus or accessing the right terminal can cause massive damage."

"By the '80s, the early pioneering work done by female programmers had mostly been forgotten. In contrast, Hollywood was putting out precisely the opposite image: Computers were a male domain. In hit movies like "Revenge of the Nerds," "Weird Science," "Tron," "WarGames" and others, the computer nerds were nearly always young white men. Video games, a significant gateway activity that led to an interest in computers, were pitched far more often at boys, as research in 1985 by Sara Kiesler, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, found. "In the culture, it became something that guys do and are good at," says Kiesler, who is also a program manager at the National Science Foundation. "There were all kinds of things signaling that if you don't have the right genes, you're not welcome.""

"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."

"Computers with their binary on–off logic seem to appeal to the military mind. This is because the military, in order to counter the inherent confusion and danger of war, is forever seeking ways to make communications as terse and unambiguous as humanly possible. Computers by their very nature do just that. Had they only been able to stand at attention and salute, in many ways they would have made ideal soldiers."

"With computers acting as the stimulus, the theory of war was assimilated into that of microeconomics. . . . Instead of evaluating military operations by their product –that is, victory – calculations were cast in terms of input–output and cost effectiveness. Since intuition was replaced by calculation, and since the latter wasto be carried out with the aid of computers, it was necessary that all the phenomena of war be reduced to quantitative form. Consequently everything that could be quantified was, while everything that could not be tended to be thrown onto the garbage heap."

"It used to be said of a man who had suffered a catastrophic setback in his line of work that he had been handed his head on a platter. We are being handed our heads with tweezers now."

"The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers."

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."

"Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer."

"Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer? Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong."

"Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?"

"A refund for defective software might be nice, except it would bankrupt the entire software industry in the first year."

"The computer was a fairly new thing in 1971, and most people were not well acquainted with it. There was only one five-week course in programming at Carleton. I had taken the class when I was a junior, and the next trimester, I was recruited to be a lab assistant to help other students who were taking the course. I was fascinated by the power of the computer to not only calculate, but also to interact with written language. I had been thinking about writing a program to interact with a human through language, but the content of such a program remained a mystery to me."

"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games."

"The primary duty of an exception handler is to get the error out of the lap of the programmer and into the surprised face of the user."

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

"High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks—chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring."

"Anything that was in the world when you were born is normal and natural. Anything invented between when you were 15 and 35 is new and revolutionary and exciting, and you'll probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."

"While technical instruments are generally the result of more or less fortuitous discoveries, which are perfected and refined over time through the accumulation of practical experience, machines have a distinctive feature: they are invented, i.e. designed in advance, and we know how they will be structured, how they will work and why they will work in a certain way before they are actually built. All this amounts to saying that there is nothing mysterious about a machine, that everything is, in principle, clear and distinct."

"Technique without art is shallow and doomed. Art without technique is insulting."

"Incorrigible humanity, therefore, led astray by the giant Nimrod, presumed in its heart to outdo in skill not only nature but the source of its own nature, who is God; and began to build a tower in Sennaar, which afterwards was called Babel (that is, 'confusion'). By this means human beings hoped to climb up to heaven, intending in their foolishness not to equal but to excel their creator."

"Only among those who were engaged in a particular activity did their language remain unchanged; so, for in­stance, there was one for all the architects, one for all the carriers of stones, one for all the stone-breakers, and so on for all the different opera­tions. As many as were the types of work involved in the enterprise, so many were the languages by which the human race was fragmented; and the more skill required for the type of work, the more rudimentary and barbaric the language they now spoke. But the holy tongue remained to those who had neither joined in the project nor praised it, but instead, thoroughly disdaining it, had made fun of the builders' stupidity."

"The technical genius which could find answers ... was not cooped up in military or civilian bureaucracy, but was to be found in universities and in the people at large."

"Asimov: Science fiction always bases its future visions on changes in the levels of science and technology. And the reason for that consistency is simply that—in reality—all other changes throughout history have been irrelevant and trivial. For example, what difference did it make to the people of the ancient world that Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire? Obviously, that event made some difference to a lot of individuals. But if you look at humanity in general, you'll see that life went on pretty much as it had before the conquest. On the other hand, consider the changes that were made in people's daily lives by the development of agriculture or the mariner's compass ... and by the invention of gunpowder or printing. Better yet, look at recent history and ask yourself, "What difference would it have made if Hitler had won World War II?" Of course, such a victory would have made a great difference to many people. It would have resulted in much horror, anguish, and pain. I myself would probably not have survived. But Hitler would have died eventually, and the effects of his victory would gradually have washed out and become insignificant—in terms of real change—when compared to such advances as the actual working out of nuclear power, the advent of television, or the invention of the jet plane."

"But of all environments, that produced by man's complex technology is perhaps the most unstable and rickety. In its present form, our society is not two centuries old, and a few nuclear bombs will do it in. To be sure, evolution works over long periods of time and two centuries is far from sufficient to breed Homo technikos.... The destruction of our technological society in a fit of nuclear peevishness would become disastrous even if there were many millions of immediate survivors. The environment toward which they were fitted would be gone, and Darwin's demon would wipe them out remorselessly and without a backward glance."

"We have become a people unable to comprehend the technology we invent."

"Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute."

"The marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermonuclear weapons systems and soft drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudoevents, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century—sex and paranoia."

"During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think."

"The quest for other, and better, forms of life, society, technology, ethics, and law may not reveal that they are actually elsewhere; but it may in the long run help us to make some of them actual on earth."

"Technology and the machine resurrected San Francisco while Pompeii still slept in her ashes."

"You know, his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us then about, and I quote, “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power,” end of quote. Six day lec- — six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the p- — potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is the most consequential technology of our time — perhaps of all time. Nothing offers more profound possibilities and risks for our economy and our security, our society, our very — for humanity."

"Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed."

"It makes sense to examine Plato and pottery together in order to understand the Greek world, Descartes and the mechanical clock together in order to understand Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the same way, it makes sense to regard the computer as a technological paradigm for the science, the philosophy, even the art of the coming generation."

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

"The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world."

"All attempts to adapt our ethical code to our situation in the technological age have failed."

"Technology is an inherent democratizer. Because of the evolution of hardware and software, you're able to scale up almost anything you can think up. ... We'll have to see if in our lifetime that means that everybody has more or less tools that are of equal power."

"What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth but also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on without public consent."

"It's Supposed To Be Automatic But Actually You Have To Press This Button"

"First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines."

"First we had the legs race. Then we had the arms race. Now we're going to have the brain race. And, if we're lucky, the final stage will be the human race."

"We have acquired technical skills on a scale undreamed of even a generation ago. We can do dramatic things and we can do them quickly; by the time damaging side effects are apparent it is often too late, or impossible, to reverse our actions."

"This is an age that has produced floods of how-to-do-it books, and it is also an age of how-to-do-it science. It is, in other words, the age of technology, in which if we know how to do something, we do it without pausing to inquire whether we should."

"In 1891, during the Presidency of William Henry Harrison [Benjamin Harrison], electric lights were first installed in the White House, the residence of the leaders of our country. At that time, commercial electricity was not economically feasible, but President Harrison wanted to affirm his confidence in the technological capability of our country."

"There are, as we have seen, a number of different modes of technological innovation. Before the seventeenth century inventions (empirical or scientific) were diffused by imitation and adaption while improvement was established by the survival of the fittest. Now, technology has become a complex but consciously directed group of social activities involving a wide range of skills, exemplified by scientific research, managerial expertise, and practical and inventive abilities. The powers of technology appear to be unlimited. If some of the dangers may be great, the potential rewards are greater still. This is not simply a matter of material benefits for, as we have seen, major changes in thought have, in the past, occurred as consequences of technological advances."

"The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity...When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society...Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism."

"Those of us concerned with developing new technology should consider ourselves to have a major undertaking to try to meet the expanding needs of the increasing number of people in the world with its finite resources and environments constraints."

"Anything that is theoretically possible will be achieved in practice, no matter what the technical difficulties are, if it is desired greatly enough."

"The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system."

"We cannot idealize technology. Technology is only and always the reflection of our own imagination, and its uses must be conditioned by our own values. Technology can help cure diseases, but we can prevent a lot of diseases by old-fashioned changes in behavior."

"It is primarily through the growth of science and technology that man has acquired those attributes which distinguish him from the animals, which have indeed made it possible for him to become human."

"Far from attempting to control science, few among the general public even seem to recognize just what "science" entails. Because lethal technologies seem to spring spontaneously from scientific discoveries, most people regard dangerous technology as no more than the bitter fruit of science, the real root of all evil."

"Once a new technology rolls out, if you don't become an end user, you become an end loser"

"Presumably, technology has made man increasingly independent of his environment. But, in fact, technology has merely substituted nonrenewable resources for renewables, which is more an increase than a decrease in dependence."

"[W]e might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?"

"La técnica no cumple los viejos sueños del hombre, sino los remeda con sorna."

"En lugar de humanizar la técnica el moderno prefiere tecnificar al hombre."

"La técnica ofrecería menos peligros si su manipuleo no le fuese tan fácil al imbécil y tan rentable al caco."

"There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life."

"If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives."

"Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences."

"The most revolutionary aspect of technology is its mobility. Anybody can learn it. It jumps easily over barriers of race and language. ... The new technology of microchips and computer software is learned much faster than the old technology of coal and iron. It took three generations of misery for the older industrial countries to master the technology of coal and iron. The new industrial countries of East Asia, South Korea, and Singapore and Taiwan, mastered the new technology and made the jump from poverty to wealth in a single generation."

"The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. ... It was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York. [The year-round growth of green grass in the Mediterranean climate meant that hay was not needed by the Romans. North of the Alps, hay maintained horses and oxen and thus their motive power, and productivity.]"

"The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York. ... Great inventions like hay and printing, whatever their immediate social costs may be, result in a permanent expansion of our horizons, a lasting acquisition of new territory for human bodies and minds to cultivate."

"Modern technology Owes ecology An apology."

"All of our exalted technological progress, civilization for that matter, is comparable to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal."

"[About research with big particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider.] I think the primary justification for this sort of science that we do is fundamental human curiosity. ... It's true, of course, that every previous generation that's made some breakthrough in understanding nature has seen those discoveries translated into new technologies, new possibilities for the human race. That may well happen with the Higgs boson. Quite frankly, at the moment I don't see how you can use the Higgs boson for anything useful."

"No technique is possible when men are free. ... Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being. For technique, this is a matter of life or death. Technique must reduce man to a technical animal, the king of the slaves of technique. Human caprice crumbles before this necessity; there can be no human autonomy in the face of technical autonomy. The individual must be fashioned by techniques, either negatively (by the techniques of understanding man) or positively (by the adaptation of man to the technical framework), in order to wipe out the blots his personal determination introduces into the perfect design of the organization."

"When technology makes it perfect, art loses."

"I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. The transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse. Musicians enjoy drawing on that finesse (and audiences respond to its exercise), so when muscular activity is rendered useless, the creative process is frustrated. No wonder artists who can afford the best of anything keep buying "retro" electronics and instruments, and revert to retro media."

"Our contemporary culture, primed by population growth and driven by technology, has created problems of environmental degradation that directly affect all of our senses: noise, odors and toxins which bring physical pain and suffering, and ugliness, barrenness, and homogeneity of experience which bring emotional and psychological suffering and emptiness. In short, we are jeopardizing our human qualities by pursuing technology as an end rather than a means. Too often we have failed to ask two necessary questions: First, what human purpose will a given technology or development serve? Second, what human and environmental effects will it have?"

"While technology can be instrumental in closing gaps and reducing social inequality, not everyone feels invited to the party. , fundamentalists and racists of all sorts, find an easy foothold for spreading hatred and anger among youngsters who feel they're missing out on the spoils of technology."

"Technology and innovation must act as a means of just —to reduce social gaps and inequality, to ensure that every person on this planet has a chance to enjoy the fruits thereof, and to make the world a better place."

"Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman once said, "What I cannot create, I do not understand." The most straightforward interpretation of this is that our technology — what we can create — is constrained by our knowledge. There are, of course, natural limits to human technology. We can't travel in a straight line faster than the speed of light, for example. There may also be natural barriers to human knowledge — facts about the universe that are forever inaccessible to us due to the configuration of our biology. Sure, we have created technology that scaffolds our senses and cognition: Microscopes let us peer into the world of the small, telescopes provide a window into the world of the big, and computers crunch numbers and data that our individual minds are incapable of processing. However, the technologies and experiments that allow us to expand our knowledge are coming at an ever-increasing price. Projects like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN ($4.75 billion to construct and $286 million annually), the International Space Station ($3 billion per year), and the international effort to achieve nuclear fusion at ITER (an estimated $18 billion to $20 billion for construction) show that human efforts to probe our scientific horizons require increasing energy and resources."

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

"Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."

"The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday."

"Crap is the essence of innovation and technological advancement. ...It's our human way of becoming ... well ... generators of more crap that helps us become more modern, productive and communicative human beings."

"Imagine Aristotle revivified and visiting Manhattan. Nothing in our social, political, economic, artistic, sexual or religious life would mystify him, but he would be staggered by our technology. Its products—skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, television, pocket calculators—would have been impossible without calculus."

"In 1970 Clarke addressed a conference based on the futuristic theme of life in the year 2000, and he envisioned a society of full unemployment: The world is heading toward “full unemployment,” Clarke said, as 99 per cent of the current human activity will be eliminated through machines, the “slaves of tomorrow.”"

"Misuse of reason might yet return the world to pre-technological night; plenty of religious zealots hunger for just such a result, and are happy to use the latest technology to effect it."

"People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed."

"The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological—technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science. Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein: TIME's Person of the Century."

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

"Most people look to technology for solutions to virtually all human problems—environmental as well as medical and economic. However, technology’s track record with regard to the environment is spotty at best. At the margins, replacement technologies can help (for example CFCs, which nearly destroyed the planetary ozone layer, have been replaced by somewhat less dangerous chemicals). Further, birth control technologies can help slow or reverse population growth. But, on the whole, the introduction of new technologies tends to increase consumption, as well as economic inequality."

"One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive - it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men."

"To this day, we see all around us the Promethean drive to omnipotence through technology and to omniscience through science. The effecting of all things possible and the knowledge of all causes are the respective primary imperatives of technology and of science. But the motivating imperative of society continues to be the very different one of its physical and spiritual survival. It is now far less obvious than it was in Francis Bacon's world how to bring the three imperatives into harmony, and how to bring all three together to bear on problems where they superpose."

"Paladin, the national anti-stalking advocacy service, says tech firms need to do more to protect victims if tech is misused. Rachel Horman-Brown, chairwoman of the charity, said: "Many victims are tracked and monitored through their phones or tablets by spyware. "So actually stalkers don't even need to physically get a tracking device on the victim to be able to monitor them. "Spyware is concerning as it can enable a stalker to switch on the camera on a victim's mobile phone, so that they can see and hear what is happening. They can also read and send text messages from the victim's phone, as well as tracking their whereabouts.""

"We must ask whether our machine technology makes us proof against all those destructive forces which plagued Roman society and ultimately wrecked Roman civilization."

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards."

"We are ready to expand the friendly people-to-people exchanges and enhance exchanges and cooperation in science, technology, culture, education, and other areas... Enhanced interactions and cooperation between China and the United States serve the interests of our two peoples and are conducive to world peace and development. We should stay firmly rooted in the present while looking ahead to the future, and view and approach China-U.S. relations from a strategic and long-term perspective... We are ready to work with the U.S. side in a spirit of seeking mutual benefit and win-win outcomes to properly address each other's concerns and facilitate the sound and the steady growth of bilateral economic cooperation and trade. We are ready to expand the friendly people-to-people exchanges and enhance exchanges and cooperation in science, technology, culture, education, and other areas."

"The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit."

"Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realises this will do cleaner work one way or the other."

"The bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be."

"We're trying to change the Kleenex mentality of technology - you buy a smartband or an Android Wear watch and next year you'll throw it away. This is a horrible world we're preparing for the next generation. We have to get away from that crazy approach, as we look at the resources left on this planet. We need to be able to create objects that are worth keeping and upgrading."

"If a sleep monitor has electrodes and wires that look like something from Frankenstein's lab, you might not wear it consistently, and the information it gathers and reports may be compromised."

"Camera-phones are like nuclear power plants: bad people will turn them into evil, good people will put them to good use."

"It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus, we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anaesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare State. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete, so that the necessity for the laborious acquisition of the capacity for rational choice by individuals can be replaced by the painless application of the fruits of scientific discovery over the whole field of human intercourse and enterprise."

"To appeal to contemporary man to revert, in this twentieth century, to a pagan-like nature worship in order to restrain technology from further encroachment and devastation of the resources of nature, is a piece of atavistic nonsense."

"Focusing on the science-technology relationship may strike some as strange, because conventional wisdom views this relationship as an unproblematic given. ... Technology is seen as being, at best, applied science ... the conventional view perceives science as clearly preceding and founding technology. ... Recent studies in the history of technology have begun to challenge this assumed dependency of technology on science. ... But the conventional view of science is persistent."

"The only way to deal with technology is with another technology. Man knows more about his dangerous tendencies than he did a hundred years ago, and in the next hundred years, his knowledge will be even more advanced. Then he will make use of it."

"Computers and robots replace humans in the exercise of mental functions in the same way as mechanical power replaced them in the performance of physical tasks. As time goes on, more and more complex mental functions will be performed by machines. Any worker who now performs his task by following specific instructions can, in principle, be replaced by a machine. This means that the role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish—in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors."

"Any demanding high technology tends to develop influential and dedicated constituencies of those who link its commercial success with both the public welfare and their own"

"All technologies should be assumed guilty until proven innocent."

"The choice of technology, whether for a rich or a poor country, is probably the most important decision to be made."

"You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock. You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms."

"Our way of life has been influenced by the way technology has developed. In future, it seems to me, we ought to try to reverse this and so develop our technology that it meets the needs of the sort of life we wish to lead."

"... All the critical instruments of modern technology—the clock, the , the , the , the , the , , , to say nothing of mathematics and chemistry and mechanics—existed in other cultures. The Chinese, the Arabs, the Greeks, long before the Northern European, had taken most of the first steps toward the machine. And although the great engineering works of the Cretans, the Egyptians, and the Romans were carried out mainly on an empirical basis, these peoples plainly had an abundance of technical skill at their command."

"When you look at the companies that have really won customers over in technology—say, Apple and Google—you find that they spend billions of dollars on R&D [research and development] each year, often spending that much on a product before they ever make a dime back in profits. Unfortunately, in the environment, I don't see as much willingness to invest heavily in R&D as I do in consumer technology. And that's a pity."

"Science and technology have freed humanity from many burdens and given us this new perspective and great power. This power can be used for the good of all. If wisdom governs our actions; but if the world is mad or foolish, it can destroy itself just when great advances and triumphs are almost without its grasp."

"As well as Japanese animation, technology has a huge influence on Japanese society, and also Japanese novels. I think it's because before, people tended to think that ideology or religion were the things that actually changed people, but it's been proven that that's not the case. I think nowadays, technology has been proven to be the thing that's actually changing people. So in that sense, it's become a theme in Japanese culture."

"The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise. That's how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure—our forests and waterways, our crop lands and snow-capped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared."

"For me, it is not unacceptable that people should receive an income without conditions attached, because what we receive in this way is not the product of the hard work of other people. It's a fragment of the massive inheritance we owe to nature, to previous generations, to technological progress, to the know-how, and all these gifts which we receive from nature, and the past."

"Technology presumes there's just one right way to do things and there never is."

"It is the constant attempt in this country [Canada] to make fundamental science responsive to the marketplace. Because technology needs science, it is tempting to require that scientific projects be justified in terms of the worth of the technology they can be expected to generate. The effect of applying this criterion is, however, to restrict science to developed fields where the links to technology are most evident. By continually looking for a short-term payoff we disqualify the sort of science that ... attempts to answer fundamental questions, and, having answered them, suggests fundamentally new approaches in the realm of applications."

"I don't believe in evolution, like people believe in God ... Science and technology are not advanced by people who believe, but by people who don't know but are doing their best to find out."

"If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world."

"Technology and production can be great benefactors of man, but they are mindless instruments, and if undirected they careen along with a momentum of their own. In our country, they pulverize everything in their path—the landscape, the natural environment,"

"It troubles me that we are so easily pressured by purveyors of technology into permitting so-called "progress" to alter our lives without attempting to control it—as if technology were an irrepressible force of nature to which we must meekly submit."

"Most of us aren't even sure where science leaves off and technology begins. Neither are the experts."

"The Pleistocene spearhead flaked from pink flint that I display on my coffee table was the high technology of its day, as sophisticated and efficient as a samuri sword or a fighter jet."

"Since the advances in technology are going to mean fewer and fewer jobs in the market economy, the only effective way to ensure those permanently displaced by machinery share the benefits of increased productivity is to provide some kind of government-guaranteed income. ... With guaranteed income independent of their jobs, workers would be more free to set their own schedules and adapt to changing conditions. That adaptability would in turn allow greater flexibility for employers, plus many benefits for society as a whole."

"Things like the proposed tech tax are actually a very good idea. The specific form of it is debatable, but the idea is that five companies are worth $3.5tn, basically because of network externalities and information monopolies, and therefore are absolutely right for efficient taxation. ... The marginal cost of production of AI is effectively zero. The ability to make these technologies available to the poorest countries at no cost is an evident option. So we should be taking special care to make sure that this revolution can reach everybody."

"Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts"

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

"I know that science and technology are not just cornucopias pouring good deeds out into the world. Scientists not only conceived nuclear weapons; they also took political leaders by the lapels, arguing that their nation — whichever it happened to be — had to have one first. ... There's a reason people are nervous about science and technology. And so the image of the mad scientist haunts our world—from Dr. Faust to Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strangelove to the white-coated loonies of Saturday morning children's television. (All this doesn't inspire budding scientists.) But there's no way back. We can't just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged. Rather, its awesome power forces on all of us, including politicians, a new responsibility — more attention to the long-term consequences of technology, a global and transgenerational perspective, an incentive to avoid easy appeals to nationalism and chauvinism. Mistakes are becoming too expensive."

"We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting, profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

"We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster."

"In fact, the thickness of the Earth's atmosphere, compared with the size of the Earth, is in about the same ratio as the thickness of a coat of shellac on a schoolroom globe is to the diameter of the globe. That's the air that nurtures us and almost all other life on Earth, that protects us from deadly ultraviolet light from the sun, that through the greenhouse effect brings the surface temperature above the freezing point. (Without the greenhouse effect, the entire Earth would plunge below the freezing point of water and we'd all be dead.) Now that atmosphere, so thin and fragile, is under assault by our technology. We are pumping all kinds of stuff into it. You know about the concern that chlorofluorocarbons are depleting the ozone layer; and that carbon dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gases are producing global warming, a steady trend amidst fluctuations produced by volcanic eruptions and other sources. Who knows what other challenges we are posing to this vulnerable layer of air that we haven't been wise enough to foresee?"

"I think the fundamental issue that has to be dealt with is that technology is not a bad thing in itself. But technology cannot simply be used by the owners of the technology, it’s got to be used to benefit all of our people. So if we replace a dangerous job with a machine, that’s a good thing. That doesn’t mean you simply displace the worker and throw him or her out on the street, and that raises the question of basic income for everybody and so forth. It is an issue that has not gotten the attention it deserves, but it’s hovering in front of us and we have to deal with it."

"We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value."

"The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology."

"The machine is a slave which serves to make other slaves. Such a domineering and enslaving drive may go together with the quest for human freedom. But it is difficult to liberate oneself by transferring slavery to other beings, men, animals, or machines; to rule over a population of machines subjecting the whole world means still to rule, and all rule implies acceptance of schemata of subjection."

"We advocate a Universal Basic Income, received by all citizens on an unconditional basis: that is, detached from the labor market. This offers a choice between work and leisure. To offer such a choice is both a fruit of an affluent society and a solution to the problem of technological unemployment."

"A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort."

"The principal impetus for my entering a career in science ... was the successful launching of Sputnik in 1957, and the then current belief that science and technology was going to be where the action was in the coming decades."

"Technology ... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other."

"Today's science is tomorrow's technology."

"Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy."

"Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible."

"Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master."

"I should regard them [the Elves interested in technical devices] as no more wicked or foolish (but in much the same peril) as Catholics engaged in certain kinds of physical research (e.g. those producing, if only as by-products, poisonous gases and explosives): things not necessarily evil, but which, things being as they are, and the nature and motives of the economic masters who provide all the means for their work being as they are, are pretty certain to serve evil ends. For which they will not necessarily be to blame, even if aware of them."

"For perhaps the first time in history, we have the resources, the know-how and the technology to make starvation and dependency relics of the past. But do we have the will?"

"The "hard" science-fiction writers are the ones who try to write specific stories about all that technology may do for us. More and more, these writers felt an opaque wall across the future. Once, they could put such fantasies millions of years in the future. Now they saw that their most diligent extrapolations resulted in the unknowable ... soon."

"Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity — a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied — and the world will pass beyond our understanding."

"I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology. And yet ... we are the initiators. Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things. We have the freedom to establish initial conditions, make things happen in ways that are less inimical than others. Of course (as with starting avalanches), it may not be clear what the right guiding nudge really is..."

"Our attention will focus on the institutional context of technological innovation rather than ... individual inventors, for the actual course of work that leads to the conception and use of technology always involves a group that has worked for a considerable period of time on the basic idea before success is achieved."

"Give me the third best technology. The second best won't be ready in time. The best will never be ready."

"Now what happens then when you introduce technology into production? You produce enormous quantities of goods by technological methods, but at the same time you put people out of work. You can say, "Oh but it always creates more jobs. There will always be more jobs." Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs. They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time have to beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren't even beautiful. And therefore an enormous amount of nonsense employment and busy work, bureaucratic and otherwise, has to be created in order to keep people working, because we believe, as good Protestants, that the devil finds work for idle hands to do. But the basic principle of the whole thing has been completely overlooked, that the purpose of the machine is to make drudgery unnecessary. And if we don't allow it to achieve its purpose, we live in a constant state of self-frustration. So then, if a given manufacturer automates his plant and dismisses his labor force, and they have to operate on a very much diminished income (say, some sort of dole), the manufacturer suddenly finds that the public does not have the wherewithal to buy his products. And therefore he has invested in this expensive automotive machinery to no purpose. And therefore obviously the public has to be provided with the means of purchasing what the machines produce. People say, "That's not fair. Where's the money going to come from? Who's gonna pay for it?" The answer is the machine. The machine pays for it, because the machine works for the manufacturer and for the community."

"Theobald points out that every individual should be assured of a minimum income. Now, you see, that absolutely horrifies most people. "Say, all these wastrels, these people who are out of a job because they're really lazy, see... ah, giving them money?" Yeah, because otherwise the machines can't work. They come to a blockage. This was the situation of the Great Depression, when here we were still, in a material sense, a very rich country, with plenty of fields and farms and mines and factories... everything going. But suddenly, because of a psychological hang-up, because of a mysterious mumbo-jumbo about the economy, about the banking, we were all miserable and poor—starving in the midst of plenty. Just because of a psychological hang-up. And that hang-up is that money is real, and that people ought to suffer in order to get it. But the whole point of the machine is to relieve you of that suffering. It is ingenuity. You see, we are psychologically back in the 17th century, and technically in the 20th. And here comes the problem. So what we have to find out how to do is to change the psychological attitude to money and to wealth, and furthermore to pleasure, and furthermore to the nature of work."

"I don’t think there is, or ever again can be, a cure for unemployment. Unemployment is not a disease, but the natural, healthy functioning of an advanced technological society."

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."

"What is peculiar and new to the [19th] century, differentiating it from all its predecessors, is its technology. It was not merely the introduction of some great isolated inventions. It is impossible not to feel that something more than that was involved. ... The process of change was slow, unconscious, and unexpected. In the nineteeth century, the process became quick, conscious, and expected. ... The whole change has arisen from the new scientific information. Science, conceived not so much in its principles as in its results, is an obvious storehouse of ideas for utilisation. ... Also, it is a great mistake to think that the bare scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about bridging the gap between the scientific ideas, and the ultimate product. It is a process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another This discipline of knowledge applies beyond technology to pure science, and beyond science to general scholarship. It represents the change from amateurs to professionals. ... But the full self-conscious realisation of the power of professionalism in knowledge in all its departments, and of the way to produce the professionals, and of the importance of knowledge to the advance of technology, and of the methods by which abstract knowledge can be connected with technology, and of the boundless possibilities of technological advance,—the realisation of all these things was first completely attained in the nineteenth century."

"Humans need technology. It’s the one thing that we do better than any other animal. We communicate, cooperate, and make tools to extend our reach. Every new tool changes us."

"I’ve heard it said that technology makes a good person better, and it makes a bad person worse. That’s okay with me. I say we keep building new versions of ourselves, keep exploring the unknown, and keep growing. We’re gonna be fine. Different, but fine. Because most people are good. Right?"

"Man has created a grandiose world of technology, of which dread and fear are often the result... Fortunately, events in the world and our way of life are not determined by technology alone."

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."

"The optimist looks at the world through rose-tinted spectacles."

"Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals. Nobody wants to read the small print in dreams."

"Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses."

"When you're a kid that sees through plastic With a harness of elastic So the girls all think you're icky And the boys all think you're queer"

"Photography and cinema contributed in large part to the secularization of history, to fixing it in its visible, "objective" form at the expense of the myths that once traversed it. Today cinema can place all its talent, all its technology in the service of reanimating what it itself contributed to liquidating. It only resurrects ghosts, and it itself is lost therein."

"The mass is a matrix from which all traditional behavior toward works of art issues today in a new form. Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation."

"The identity-obsessed left has consistently sneered at those who want accuracy in casting decisions, pretending all criticism of politically motivated choices is based on bigotry or sexual frustration."

"But films . . . it’s funny. People buy a ticket. That ticket is their transport to a fantasy which you create for them. Fantasyland, that’s all, and you make their fantasies live. Fantasies of love or hatred or whatever it is. People want their fantasies over and over. People who masturbate usually masturbate with, at the most, four or five fantasies. By and large. Most people like the same food and they like the same kind of music, they like the same kind of sexual fantasy for a period of time, then maybe it changes. As it is in children. Who is it? Bruce Lee. That’s the hero. Then you grow up and grow out of your Bruce Lee period, or your Picasso Blue Period, and go into another period. “But with kids, because they outpower us, because they have no representation, because they are so dependent, all they think about is power. Dinosaurs or the Million Dollar Man, because they feel so helpless, because they have no way out of it, except fantasy. Because they are only that tall. “And that’s all films are. Just an extension of childhood, where everybody wants to be freer, everybody wants to be powerful, everybody wants to be so overwhelmingly attractive that there’s just no doing anything about it. Or everybody wants to have comradeship and to be understood."

"At the outbreak of war in 1939, the power of the feature film, as a means of communication and persuasion rather than just a vehicle for entertainment, was already well established. One of the earliest programmes of study into the effects of the moving image upon the mind had been carried out by the Payne Fund between 1929 and 1932. The experiments that it carried out concentrated on such issues as the extent to which children learnt from film and how well they retained what they learnt; the possibility that exposure to film affected attitudes; and how moral standards might be affected by what was viewed. The findings of these studies showed that the human mind could be shaped and moulded by persons in positions of influence; and, in this context, the film maker was in an almost unique position of influence."

"The Government controlled the film stock supply at this time and all film scripts for films to be made in the UK had to be submitted to the Ministry of Information. If a film was not approved then no film stock would be supplied. In 1939 the BBFC still operated under the broad guiding principles of former President TP O’Connor’s list of ‘grounds for deletion’ which were first published in 1916. These essentially barred: * References to controversial politics * Relations of capital and labour * Scenes tending to disparage public characters and institutions * Realistic horrors of warfare * Scenes and incidents calculated to afford information to the enemy * Incidents having a tendency to disparage our Allies * Scenes holding up the King’s uniform to contempt or ridicule * The exploitation of tragic incidents of the war The aim of all these constraints was to try and ensure that the kinds of films that came out during this period dealt with war in ways that were unlikely to be particularly upsetting or challenging for audiences."

"While people are always quick to take up the cudgels against censorship of the press, or radio, any crackpot can advocate new forms of censorship for the movies, and not a voice is lifted in protest. There's something illogical about this indifference to censorship of the movies. After all, it's just as much a medium of public expression as are the radio and newspapers."

"I have never heard of any youngster going wrong, turning to crime, because of the movies. It simply isn't possible. Our relation to crime is, in a sense, the same as the prison warden's. We don't create it. We deal with it after it has happened, and we always make the criminal look bad."

"Sometimes watching a movie is a bit like getting raped."

"In all, markets outside the United States accounted for roughly $25 billion of $35.9 billion in worldwide box-office sales last year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Precisely what share of international sales was captured by American-based companies is unclear, but they remained dominant. Still, Jonathan Wolf, the American Film Market’s managing director, has been watching what he calls “a global shift away from U. S. product over the last 25 years.” Government subsidies for local film have changed tastes in some regions of the world. That shift, and a new generation of television-trained international filmmakers, Mr. Wolf said, have slowly undermined American-based film in ways that will again be apparent at this year’s market. Over a decade, he noted, English-language film exporters have dropped to about 63 percent from 73 percent among those at his event, while United States-based exporters now account for roughly 47 percent of the American Film Market’s pool, down from 53 percent 10 years earlier."

"According to Rentrak, American studio titles accounted for 39 percent of Chinese ticket sales in 2013, down from 44 percent a year earlier. Speaking in October, Rob Cain, a producer and consultant with considerable experience in China, said the American share was back to almost 44 percent. Of nine films to take in more than $100 million at the Chinese box office at that point, five were Chinese films. But an expected strong performance by Paramount’s “Interstellar” will probably keep the American share relatively high through the year’s end, Mr. Cain said. China, aside from a deeply rooted, action-oriented Hong Kong movie culture, has yet to become a powerful exporter of film. To date, it has been more like India, a prolific producer whose wares are mostly viewed within its borders, and among a vibrant diaspora around the world."

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

"I'm going to leave you with this machine, pay attention, she's going to ask you a bunch of questions."

"A message I’ve been telling myself: the cinema is very conservative, and unless you have a story that satisfies you, that is within the unchallenging zone, but you love it, you can’t do it as cinema. Otherwise, you better go do it for television, which is more daring now."

"The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized."

"I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images."

"… a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries, … a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence,… which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star’ in Los Angeles."

"I always say a screenplay is the big plain pizza, the one with tomatoes and cheese. And then the director comes and says, “You know, it needs some mushrooms.” And you go, “Put mushrooms on it.” And then the costume designer throws peppers on it, and – and pretty soon, you have a pizza with everything on it. And sometimes it’s the greatest pizza of your life and sometimes you think, “Well, that was a mistake. We should have left it with only the mushrooms.”"

"Cinema is an old whore, like circus and variety, who knows how to give many kinds of pleasure."

"The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all, that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open, has disappeared. Is it still possible that one thousand people might group together in the dark and experience the dream that a single individual has directed?"

"A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together."

"Frivolity, sensuality, indecency, appalling illiteracy and endless platitude are the marks of the degenerate American Theater under Jewish control. [...] it is quite possible that many who read this are not interested in the theater, and are, in fact, convinced. that the theater and cinema are a menace. But, what principally makes these things a menace? This-that the stage and cinema today represent the principal cultural element of 90 percent of the people. What the average young person absorbs as to good form, proper deportment, refinement as contrasted with coarseness, correctness of speech or choice of words, customs and feelings of other nations, fashion of clothes, ideas of religion and law, are derived from what is seen at the cinema and theater. The masses' sole idea of home and life of the rich is derived from the stage and the movies."

"Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things."

"[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers. … The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it. … The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it."

"The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t."

"Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second."

"A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad."

"Watching movies, but we ain't seeing a thing tonight."

"If you want to be a storyteller, be an author, be a novelist, be a writer, don't be a film director. Cinema is not the greatest medium for telling stories. It is too specific, leaves so little room for the imagination to take wing other than in the strict directions indicated by the director. Read "he entered the room" and imagine a thousand scenarios. See "he entered the room" in cinema-as-we-know-it, and you are going to be limited to one scenario only."

"If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!"

"Film is not the art of scholars, but illiterates."

"As you see [filmmaking] makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone – just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffaut. They have become clowns."

"I feel that peace has hardly been imagined. It is rarely dramatized in the theater, in the movies, even in books."

"Some 20 years after Lumière’s film, a Harvard psychologist named Hugo Munsterberg challenged researchers to figure out the depth of, and reason for, cinema’s influence: “For the first time the psychologist can observe the starting of an entirely new esthetic development, a new form of true beauty in the turmoil of a technical age, created by its very technique and yet more than any other art destined to overcome outer nature by the free and joyful play of the mind,” Munsterberg wrote in The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, considered by many to be the first important behavioral look at film. But though the research gauntlet had been thrown down, what followed is what one would expect when looking for artistry in a Pauly Shore flick: nothing. Or, at least, very little, says Stuart Fischoff, founder of the Journal of Media Psychology, who in 2003 retired from the psychology department at California State University, Los Angeles. Between 1916, when Munsterberg wrote The Photoplay, and the 1950s, perhaps the most influential psychological research on cinema was L.L. Thurnstone’s 1928 Payne Fund report — a study whose purpose was to indict, not investigate, the role of film on behavior, Fischoff says. In fact, for much of the 20th century, the psychological study of film was considered “lightweight stuff,” says Dolf Zillmann, University of Alabama, one of the field’s pioneers. Film study was approached with a Freudian mindset, and few empirical studies took place. But in the past decade or so, such research has experienced a resurgence — the rare sequel that outperforms the original. “There’s really a new psychology of film in the making,” says Zillmann. Film study from a psychological perspective now takes place in campuses around the country, combining interdisciplinary approaches from several areas, with an increasing focus on the neuroscience of viewer response."

"Let's face it, motion pictures are sausages. But that doesn't mean you can't make artful sausage."

"The culture is unchallenged as the standard setter, and the child’s sense of right and wrong and his priorities in life are shaped primarily by what he learns from the television, the movie screen and the CD player."

"In the world we live in - and the system we've created for ourselves, in terms of it's a big industry - you cannot lose money. So the point is that you're forced to make a particular kind of movie. And I used to say this all the time, with people, you know, back when Russia was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and they'd say: "Oh, but aren’t you so glad that you're in America?" And I'd say: "Well, I know a lot of Russian filmmakers and they have a lot more freedom than I have. All they have to do is be careful about criticizing the government. Otherwise, they can do anything they want"."

"The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this."

"Dedicated enforcement campaigns have become relatively common sights in developing countries as part of the release strategies for major domestic films, with notable examples including The Irony of Fate 2 (2007), in Russia, Tsotsi (2005) in South Africa, Tropa de Elite 2 (2010) in Brazil and Lagaan (2001), in India. Police mobilization in these situations is generally geared toward the suppression of street piracy during the initial release window for the film, when the majority of profits are made."

"Since 2002, the US movie industry has been a $9-10.5 billion business in domestic box office revenues, with successive record-setting years in 2007, 2008, and 2009. International distribution brought in some 16.6 billion in 2007, $18.1 billion in 2008, and 19.3 billion in 2009 (MPAA 2009). DVD sales are a separate, massive revenue stream: global sales peaked at $23.4 billion in 2007 before dropping to $22.4 billion in 2008 and falling further in 2009. Licensing of movie-related merchandise is a third revenue stream, estimated at roughly $16 billion per year (Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf 2009). This success is not limited to Hollywood. The Indian movie industry - second in global revenues - has also boomed in recent years and registered 13% growth in 2008, with up to $2.2 billion in box office revenues (seefigure 1.4). Revenues in 2009 dropped slightly to $1.86 billion (Kohi-Khandekar 2010)."

"Although US domestic box office revenues have grown 40% since 2000, the real growth markets have been overseas. Bo office revenues have roughly quadrupled in India since 2000 and tripled in Brazil; they have tripled in Russia since 2004. Because this growth took place against low baselines, however, these markets remain very small compared to their US and European counterparts."

"White examines the hold of analogical reasoning on the legal imagination by assessing the way courts responded to innovations in the social world. The two examples that are the subject of this essay are the treatment of radio and motion pictures in the early part of the twentieth century. He looks at how law responded to these innovations and, in particular, how courts responded to challenges to efforts to impose a regulatory regime on them. The drive to regulate emerged from a particular awareness of the media’s mass quality and the immediacy of the effects they created; in addition, it was fueled by the Progressive Era’s tendency to approve regulation by experts as a way of addressing social concerns. Yet these regulations, at least from the perspective of today, raise serious First Amendment issues. White examines cases challenging regulation to show that analogical reasoning was used to construct a legal history in such a way as to justify regulation in spite of the First Amendment. In the case of film, courts constructed such a history by categorizing it as a form of property. Like property, film might be used to do “evil.” Courts then conjured the history of the “police powers” by which states could invoke their powers to protect the morals of the public. In addition, they brought the regulation of film within the history of administrative law and, as a result, focused only on the nature of the legislative delegation involved. Having established framework of analogies, courts then were able to bring to bear the relevant precedents. In their treatment of those cases they tended to anticipate the position of Marshall in “Payne”, insisting on the value of consistency and continuity of law’s doctrinal structure."

"As one industry insider argued, "Saving Private Ryan suffers on [video] cassette. If you see it at home, you are by no means as impressed with it as you were in the movie theater. And Shakespeare in Love is a more intimate picture, it plays well on cassette. It may actually be enhanced by watching it at home."" In response, Dreamworks' marketing chief, Terry Press countered: "That goes to a larger issue. You're a member of the Motion Picture Academy, not the television video academy. These movies are meant to be seen in movie theaters, all of them. They're not meant to be stopped and started and paused when the phone rings or to feed the dog.""

"A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later."

"They’re outraged not because of any personal prejudice. They’re outraged because they hate to see any change made on a series and characters they had gotten familiar with. In Spider-Man, when they got a new actor, that bothered them, even though it was a white actor. I don’t think it had to do with racial prejudice as much as they don’t like things changed."

"A motion picture must be true to life. If a picture portrays a false emotion it trains people seeing it to react abnormally."

"Sound and talking undoubtedly increase the entertainment value of a picture. There is a distinct conflict, however, between a pictorial and sound elements, which cannot be entirely avoided until third dimensional pictures are made."

"Not even the church is so powerfully equipped to serve the public psychologically as is the motion picture company."

"If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong. To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films."

"Hollywood, television and film is not my prime area of interest. Because I would never have any control, working in those areas. It’s nice to get the money from a Hollywood project, but whatever they do with it, it would be their piece of work, and not mine."

"Photography because of its causal relationship to the world seems to give us the truth or something close to the truth. I am skeptical about this for many reasons. But even if photography doesn't give us truth on a silver-platter, it can make it harder for us to deny reality. It puts a leash on fantasy, confabulation and self-deception. It provides constraints, borders. It circumscribes our ability to lie — to ourselves and to others."

"It could be that today's conservative movement remains in thrall to the same narrative that has defined its attitude toward film and the arts for decades. Inspired by feelings of exclusion after Hollywood and the popular culture turned leftward in the '60s and '70s, this narrative has defined the film industry as an irredeemably liberal institution toward which conservatives can only act in opposition—never engagement. Ironically, this narrative ignores the actual history of Hollywood, in which conservatives had a strong presence from the industry's founding in the early 20th century up through the '40s, '50s and into the mid-'60s]. The conservative Hollywood community at that time included such leading directors as Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and Cecil B. DeMille, and major stars like John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Charlton Heston. These talents often worked side by side with notable Hollywood liberals like directors Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and John Huston, and stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Spencer Tracy. The richness of classic Hollywood cinema is widely regarded as a testament to the ability of these two communities to work together, regardless of political differences. As the younger, more left-leaning "New Hollywood" generation swept into the industry in the late '60s and '70s, this older group of Hollywood conservatives faded away, never to be replaced. Except for a brief period in the '80s when the Reagan Presidency led to a conservative reengagement with film—with popular stars like Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger making macho, patriotic action films—conservatives appeared to abandon popular culture altogether. In the wake of this retreat, conservative failure to engage with Hollywood now appears to have been recast by today's East Coast conservative establishment into a generalized opposition toward film and popular culture itself. In the early '90s, conservative film critic Michael Medved codified this oppositional feeling toward Hollywood in his best-selling book Hollywood vs. America."

"Of course, print will continue to be used, and it is interesting to speculate what kinds of reading matter would survive in a rigidly totalitarian society. Newspapers will presumably continue until television technique reaches a higher level, but apart from newspapers it is doubtful even now whether the great mass of people in the industrialized countries feel the need for any kind of literature. They are unwilling, at any rate, to spend anywhere near as much on reading matter as they spend on several other recreations. Probably novels and stories will be completely superseded by film and radio productions. Or perhaps some kind of low grade sensational fiction will survive, produced by a sort of conveyor-belt process that reduces human initiative to the minimum."

"It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery. But a sort of mechanizing process can already be seen at work in the film and radio, in publicity and propaganda, and in the lower reaches of journalism. The Disney films, for instance, are produced by what is essentially a factory process, the work being done partly mechanically and partly by teams of artists who have to subordinate their individual style. Radio features are commonly written by tired hacks to whom the subject and the manner of treatment are dictated beforehand: even so, what they write is merely a kind of raw material to be chopped into shape by producers and censors. So also with the innumerable books and pamphlets commissioned by government departments. Even more machine-like is the production of short stories, serials, and poems for the very cheap magazines. Papers such as the Writer abound with advertisements of literary schools, all of them offering you ready-made plots at a few shillings a time. Some, together with the plot, supply the opening and closing sentences of each chapter. Others furnish you with a sort of algebraical formula by the use of which you can construct plots for yourself. Others have packs of cards marked with characters and situations, which have only to be shuffled and dealt in order to produce ingenious stories automatically. It is probably in some such way that the literature of a totalitarian society would be produced, if literature were still felt to be necessary. Imagination — even consciousness, so far as possible — would be eliminated from the process of writing. Books would be planned in their broad lines by bureaucrats, and would pass through so many hands that when finished they would be no more an individual product than a Ford car at the end of the assembly line. It goes without saying that anything so produced would be rubbish; but anything that was not rubbish would endanger the structure of the state. As for the surviving literature of the past, it would have to be suppressed or at least elaborately rewritten."

"The talkies are the only art that would attract Leonardo da Vinci were he alive to-day. It is the only art that excites a scientist's curiosity, the only art that challenges the engineer, the only art that offers the great artist a medium capable of expressing every human thought and emotion, as well as the pure aesthetic effects of color and music. It is a baby giant, as clumsy as all babies are. Its noises are, we grieve to admit, often as inartistic as the squalling of a baby. But squalling babies have a way of growing up into soft-voices women and great singers. This is why we, the authors, have gladly played the role of nursemaids. We don't know what the baby will be doing and saying when it grows up. But we are sure it will make its mark in the world."

"The literary story is hard enough, heaven knows. It calls for a thorough understanding of the kinds of people you set out to depict. It cannot be of high quality unless the author can plot well. And, of course, it must be cast in distinctive style. The picture of the silent screen does not demand literary abilities, but it does require insight into character as well as drama; furthermore, it is founded upon a high order of visual imagination. The stage play, in a certain sense, calls for all the chief abilities of literary stories and silent pictures; and, in addition, it must be managed with dialogue, which is some thing very different from literary language. But the sound picture goes beyond all of these other art forms. To invent a good one, you must grasp character, drama, settings, and dialogue. But you must go beyond these. You need a fanciful ear. The backgrounds of your story now cry out. The tale is filled with noises. And every least sound adds a unique quality to the total effect."

"People go to moving pictures to be made to weep or laugh, to be happy or unhappy as they watch what hap pens to the screen characters before them. They become completely absorbed in the screen action. They follow the story, willy-nilly. And in so doing, they are forced to feel the emotion/ aroused by the dramatic situations.Pictures makes millions of people, day after day, feel glad or sad, courageous or fearful, righteous or angry. He, can do this, that is to say, within limits, and these limits largely depend upon the story of the picture. If the producer has a powerful enough story, these millions for get themselves and their little joys and woes and escape into the scenes on the screen before them. Small wonder then, that, with such stupendous power over the thinking and feeling of myriads of men, women, and children, the moving picture producer is willing, even eager, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars — or even a cool mil lion or so — to secure and produce a picture for this world of movie-goers. But the story selected must itself have power enough to arouse the emotions of an audience. Excellent photography and good acting can help to carry successfully any story, but they can never put emotional meaning into a story that is built without emotional appeal."

"The task of depicting character in the sound picture is, in one sense, far easier than in the silent picture. The latter, being essentially pantomime clarified with titles, is cruelly restricted as a medium of depicting human nature. Few of us express ourselves in postures and gestures. Our natural manner finds itself freer and surer in spoken words and, most of all, in decisive acts involving such forms of language as promises, commands, prohibitions, and so on, all of which readily lends itself to reproduction in talk and scene combined. To this extent, character drawing in sound pictures seems to offer pretty much the same opportunities and difficulties as in the drama of the Broadway stage. But a closer study brings out the somewhat startling fact that a sound picture, skillfully handled, can reveal more of a personality than any other device of art or science. The actor on the stage can talk, gesticulate, and move to and fro; but there his powers end. The actor of the talking screen can do all of these things and then carry on his subjective life in the presence of the spectators. We can show pictorially his memories, his fears, his hopes, and his cunning schemes. We can reveal his clenched fist in a close-up. We can show the beads of perspiration on his brow, as he trembles with suppressed rage."

"I'm fascinated by the movies simply because it is an enormous machine for making money and no matter how badly they run it, it still makes money. It's the perfect industry to put your nephew in and your idiot cousin, because they'll be geniuses."

"There is only one thing that can kill the movies, and that is education."

"We know the power of short movies. When they are well done, [they are] greater and more incisive than full-length films. Professionally done trailers are sometimes better than the full movies they announce, being a form of visual art in themselves or even containing self-sufficient micro-stories."

"Until about the mid-1930s, law in film was an authoritative and neutral process—a formal and almost religious space—in which truth could be revealed or justice done through heavy-handed elites. Starting from the late-1930s until the post-WWII period—the "film noir" period—film depicted an underside of law, corruption, and unreasonable attachment to formality at the expense of justice. There are a lot of films from this time that depict legal heroes that flout the law to make sure the truth comes out and that depict mobs taking over both the legal process and civil society. In the mid-1950s onward, classical Hollywood cinema took over with its brighter depiction of the promise of law to help the everyday person. It is an evolution that sounds in grassroots democracy, the value of juries, and the promise of individuals to make a difference working within the system. From the late-1980s, many law films were ahead of their time in terms of civil rights, depicting African American judges, female litigators, and a legal system that is open and sufficiently self-reflective to incorporate criticism into its pursuit of justice. You might think of Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks and Denzel Wasghinton, as one of these films, or A Few Good Men, with Demi Moore as Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway and J.A. Preston as Judge Julius Alexander Randolf. TV has followed a similar arc, but with more police serials than courtroom dramas. As you can see from these periods, the themes of film track and help constitute U.S. socio-political culture."

"Across all the countries examined, females were underrepresented in the film workforce compared to their actual percentages globally. Discrepancy scores were calculated to determine the degree to which on-screen depictions of occupations differ from real-world values (see Table 6). The scores were grouped into three categories based on the size of the discrepancy: small (5-9.9), moderate (10-19.9), and large (20+). India was the only country in which female film jobs revealed a small difference from the real world. Five countries (Japan, Brazil, U.K., China, Korea) showed moderate differences between movie and actual workforce percentages and five countries (France, Russia, U.S., Australia, Germany) showed large differences. Once again, women are underrepresented on screen. This time they comprise less than a quarter of the workforce in international films, which is well below their share in the real world of work. Given that movies can set an agenda for the next generation entering the workforce, the lack of females in the labor market is a concern. Perhaps even more troubling is the types of occupations women are shown possessing, the topic of the next section."

"Well, Jack Warner may have been celebrated for calling writers "Schmucks with Underwoods," but 20 years earlier, Irving Thalberg … said that "The most important person in the motion picture process is the writer, and we must do everything in our power to prevent them from ever realizing that.""

"From the 1960s, cinema was one of the most important aspects of the alliances between Cuba, the USSR and African liberation movements. Filmmaking - both documentary and fiction - in support of rebellious causes were emerging across the world, from Palestine to Latin America, and young members of guerrilla movements such as the PAIGC's Flora Gomes and Sana Na N'hada were sent to Cuba to learn the language and techniques of Third Cinema, the values of revolution and social justice of which echoed the early, utopian ideals of African anti-colonial struggles."

"Watching violence in movies or in TV programs stimulates the spectators to imitate what they see much more than if seen live or on TV news. In movies, violence is filmed with perfect illumination, spectacular scenery, and in slow motion, making it even romantic. However, in the news, the public has a much better perception of how horrible violence can be, and it is used with objectives that do not exist in the movies."

"I honestly don't understand the big fuss made over nudity and sex in films. It's silly. On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can't watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn't make any sense, does it?"

"A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking - it always tends to break up as you go along and drag you under with it."

"To make a film is to improve on life, to arrange it to suit oneself, to prolong the games of childhood, to construct something which is at once a new toy and a vase in which one can arrange in a permanent way the ideas one feels in the morning."

"I make films that I would like to have seen when I was a young man."

"Data from 93 countries and territories cover film production, exhibition and distribution for countries at various levels of economic development for the 2015 reference year.New data show the growing importance of developing countries in the cinema industry. In 2015, developing countries, accounted for 59% of global movie production (see the figure). Booming cinema industries in India and Nigeria, known as Bollywood and Nollywood, are driving growth. In India, for example, film production has nearly doubled since 2005 when just over 1,000 films were produced. With the introduction of digital technology, production started to ramp up in 2012, and in 2015 India reported that 1,907 feature films had been produced."

"But you just don't know where any film is going to go, or how it's going to end up. Films so often don't get the love and attention needed to get to the right festival, or find the right distributor, or get seen by the world."

"[A PG-13 rating is the] studio wanting to make money. R-rated movies are excluded because they limit the audience. The capitalist system completely dominates the American film industry. It’s all about the bottom line. Any argument about filmmaking or art is lost. Even the art of meaning is lost. There’s no meaning to American cinema anymore. The only meaning is money. It’s reduced to that, and it’s horrible. Capitalism can also accept there are other values than money, but it looks like studios can only look at movies for pure profit. That’s why the R rating is gone. Then you get more people, but you sacrifice everything that is edgy or sexual. You sacrifice anything that might offend people. Now if you go to a multiplex, everything is PG-13."

"As I now move—graciously, I hope—toward the door marked Exit, it occurs to me that the only thing I ever really liked to do was go to the movies. Naturally, Sex and Art always took precedence over the cinema. Unfortunately, neither ever proved to be as dependable as the filtering of present light through that moving strip of celluloid which projects past images and voices onto a screen."

"To write a script today means working for a committee of people who know nothing about movies, as opposed, say, to real estate or the higher art of bookkeeping."

"A film is a ribbon of dreams. The camera is much more than a recording apparatus; it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world that is not ours and that brings us to the heart of a great secret. Here magic begins."

"Even more important was American influence in Europe through its music, movies, and fashion. Unlike the Soviet efforts at gaining a cultural influence, there was little that was centrally planned about this. The State Department and the CIA tried to make sure that “healthy” American films and literature were spread abroad, but their successes were limited. Instead, company marketing and consumer responses ruled the roost. The ability of US film studios and record producers to make their output inexpensive and plentiful, while Europe suffered all kinds of shortages, also gave imports an advantage. In 1947, for instance, only forty French films were made, while 340 were imported from the United States. Though the music of Elvis Presley or the movies of Marlon Brando or James Dean were not set up to be propaganda for the American way of life, young Europeans liked them, in part because of their rebelliousness. Wearing T-shirts and blue jeans merged a form of protest against convention with identifying with US movies. In the mid-1950s, American and European teenagers were more united by Brando than by NATO."

"See it Film it Change it"

"The percentage of people who actually go to a movie theater has declined from a high of 65% of the population in 1930 (before television) to about 10% over the last several decades."

"By 1990, movies were either rented or sold at much more reasonable prices directly to consumers (known as sell-through). Video rentals reached a plateau, but video sell-through sales continued to grow. By 1992, the value of video sell-through sales exceeded the domestic theatrical box office for the first time. Home video caused a significant downward shift in the box office; for instance, the domestic box office represented 80% of studio revenues in 1980, but by 1992 it decreased to no more than 25%."

"With the exception of large U.S. companies whose feature films are distributed and seen on the five continents, production from the other four leading countries generally have geographically more restricted circulation. Feature films produced in India, for instance, are popular with the Indian diaspora, as well as Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan."

"The international co-production of feature films, which involves companies from two or more countries that finance and produce films, can be considered a gateway to diversity of cultural expressions as it enables the exchange of human resources –both technical and artistic–across countries and,undoubtedly,facilitates the circulation of films across two or more film markets. In this regard, for instance, the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production(CE, 1992) considers international co-production as “an instrument of creation and expression of cultural diversity”. It is worth noting that international co-production is a practice that started in the mid-20th century among companies from countries with major historical, cultural and/or linguistic ties. Furthermore, since the late 20thcentury, governments from wide political spectrums have been encouraging co-productions with other countries through international programmes, such as the Ibermedia Programme introduced in 1996 for the Ibero-American area. In a highly competitive and globalised market, international co-production is a way for film production companies to broaden their markets of operation."

"A key sector for analysing the diversity of the film industry is distribution. Distribution companies are directly linked to the diversity offered to potential spectators, acting in many markets and reaching diverse audiences through cinema complexes. Focusing on the distribution of feature films in theatres, the world’s most successful films were distributed and promoted by companies belonging to the U.S.majors: Buena Vista (an affiliate of the Walt Disney Company), Sony Pictures Releasing, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Warner Brother and Paramount Pictures. These companies have a dominant position in several countries of the world (in Latin America and Western Europe, for instance) and rule the distribution of both Hollywood blockbusters and locally-produced films that are likely to become commercial hits in their respective markets.In addition, often the U.S. majors operate in foreign markets in a coordinated fashion, to the detriment of local productions and independent distributors, as can be seen in Spain (TDC, 2006). This has a negative impact on the diversity of feature films that the markets can offer to local audiences. Thus, many feature films do not access screening slots in the theatres of their country of origin."

"In contrast with the wide-ranging dissemination at the international scale reached by U.S. productions, the distribution of feature films beyond the borders of the countries that produce them is a serious problem in regions such as Europe and Latin America. As mentioned by the European Commission when launching its ‘European Film in the Digital Era’ strategy in 2014, “the number of movies made in Europe went from 1,100 in 2008 to 1,300 in 2012, but for the most part they are only screened in the country of their production and rarely reach distribution across borders”. Therefore, the European Union has a new strategy aimed at the“need to take full advantage of the new distribution methods to drive cultural diversity and competitiveness” (EC, 2014)."

"The goods and services derived from cultural industries are, by nature, vehicles of the expression of values, customs, languages, gastronomies, etc. This is the view of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which states that “cultural activities, goods and services have both an economic and a cultural nature, because they convey identities, values and meanings” (UNESCO, 2005, Preamble). Since its inception, cinema has been a major vehicle for the cultural expression of nations. This has been complemented from the middle of the last century by television. Feature films –the main industrial product of the sector –can be analysed based on various characteristics: film genres, aesthetics, languages used, ideas expressed, social sectors represented, patterns of behaviour, etc."

"The Preamble of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Diversity of Cultural Expressions reads, “Linguistic diversity is a fundamental element of cultural diversity” (UNESCO, 2005). Albornoz and García Leiva (2016) state that advocating linguistic diversity is an imperative for the international community, as every language reflects a one-of-a-kind vision of the world, with its own value system, its specific philosophy and its particular cultural characteristics. A language provides support to an identity and is an essential element of an irreplaceable cultural wealth. Feature films, as well as other cultural expressions, provide a channel of expression and dissemination for approximately 6,000 languages which are spoken in the world.11Asseveral studies have pointed out (Ranaivoson, 2007; UIS, 2011), diversity is a multidimensional concept. Stirling’s definition (1998, 2007) of diversity includes a combination of three components: variety, balance and disparity. Variety refers to the number of different categories defined; specifically for films, we may ask, how many languages can be identified in the cinematographic production of a country? Balance refers to the extent to which these categories are represented: what percentages of each language are used in films? And disparity refers to the degree of dissimilarity that exists between the different categories: how different are the languages used? Thus, the larger the number of categories and the more balanced and disparate the categories, the more diverse the system."

"As mentioned extensively by film industry experts, most of today’s film consumption is outside the traditional cinema circuit. Televisions, streaming media players, computers, tablets and smartphones are popular platforms for watching and enjoying feature films for a major portion of the world’s population. However, the theatrical release of a feature film continues to be a major effort vis-à-vis commercial exploitation in the rest of the film consumption windows (free-to-air and pay television, DVD, online platforms)."

"In 2012, the number of feature films greatly increased throughout the world, and the following year a new production record was hit: 7,610 movies. However, the sustained growth of global production during the 2005-2013 period has not undermined the weight of the main production countries: India, the United States, China, Japan and most Western European countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain. This finding, in the attempt to analyse the diversity of sources, reveals a high degree of concentration of production in the economic superpowers and in some of the most heavily-populated countries of the world. A special case in point is India, the country with the second-largest population, and the number-one film making country, which is experiencing a major growth in production. India produced 1,041 movies in 2005 to 1,724 movies in 2013. The number of feature films produced in 2013, mostly with digital technology and at multiple sites, represented over one-fifth of worldwide production. International feature film co-productions, driven by the public sector and private production companies, were common in some countries of Western Europe and the United States. France had the largest number of co-productions in the 2012-2013 biennium. Production companies view co-productions with companies from other countries as a means of taking advantage of the film making grant programmes of various countries and of extending the reach of films. Increased production does not necessarily lead to a better and larger dissemination of films. The dominant positions of the U.S. majors in many markets directly impact the diversity offered,i.e.what content reaches the screens and how. For instance, the European space, comprising countries with a prominent tradition for production, repeatedly expresses the lack of reach of its feature films across borders . Most countries have monolingual (in their respective official languages) or bilingual film production. Again, India stands out for the wide spectrum of local languages in its movies, none of which has a share over 17%. In countries with multilingual film production, there are one or several drivers for this: a historical presence of different social groups within the country and/or large migrant groups, geo-cultural proximity with companies speaking other languages, and the development of strategies for commercial penetration in new markets, among others. Dubbing policies implemented by countries are unfavourable for the recognition of languages other than those of the place where foreign films are screened."

"According to the three categories in the UIS 2014 Questionnaire on Feature Film Statistics, there is a clear pre-eminence of fiction feature films versus documentaries and animation movies. Additionally, all countries offering information on the production of fiction, animation and documentary feature films show a clear imbalance among the categories. There is a strong geographic concentration of the revenues from the commercial screening of feature films in theatres. The top 10 markets, led by the United States/Canada, China and Japan, held three-fourths of global revenues during the 2012-2013 period. China, the most heavily-populated country in the world, is seeing a sustained increase in its gross box office for feature films in theatres (in 2013, it exceeded US$3.6billion). It appears that the world’s second film market in terms of gross box office is ready to overcome, in the near future, the stagnated market of the United States/Canada. India, with average ticket prices well below those prevailing in the top revenue markets, is the top country in terms of volume of tickets sold. In 2012, Indian theatres received more theatre goers than the United States, China and Japan together. Even though there are noticeable differences between countries and inside countries at the global level during 2012 and 2013, the average price of theatre tickets continued to grow. The 2005-2013 period saw an increase of 40% in the average ticket price. The most popular feature films watched in theatres in 2012 and 2013 confirm a very high concentration of consumption of blockbusters produced (or co-produced) and distributed by U.S. majors. They are mostly action/adventure movies, some with animation techniques, targeting children and adolescents, supported by multi-million budgets and international advertising campaigns. As has been the case in recent years, mass consumption of feature films in theatres has favoured the franchises of various series and bringing to the big screen stories that were originally created as [[comics."

"The international filmmaking industry faces some shortcomings regarding diversity in its sources, some of the characteristics of films made and the majority consumption of feature films. Therefore, it is imperative to strengthen and renew some public policies and civil society strategies with the aim to strengthen diversity in (and of) the filmmaking industry. Policies should address the complex and changing relationship of the film industry with the audiovisual sector and cultural industries in general. The principle of equitable access upheld by the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions states: “Equitable access to a rich and diversified range of cultural expressions from all over the world and access of cultures to the means of expressions and dissemination constitute important elements for enhancing cultural diversity and encouraging mutual understanding.” (UNESCO, 2005: Article 2.7). Making this principle a reality involves diversifying and strengthening the fabric of feature film production centres, changing the structures governing the distribution of films at international scale, and implementing policies to encourage diversified film consumption."

"[T]here is little diversity in film consumption in Latin America, where movies produced in the United States account for at least 80% of total market share of attendance. National films in the global Top 10 are almost nonexistent in this region, with the exception of Brazil, where locally-produced films account for a 10% share of attendance. The same situation prevails in Australia and Canada, where more than 80% of the audience share views American films. Although for most countries the share of the audience viewing national films is quite low, there are notable exceptions. The Republic of Korea is the only country where the audience share of national movies accounts for the majority (54%). This could be explained by national policies that impose a quota on the distribution of national films."

"Examples of countries with diverse film markets include Morocco and Georgia. In Morocco, films from the United States represent approximately one-third of audience share. Interestingly, the audience share for foreign films (excluding American films) is 42%, which is significantly higher compared to any other country for which there is data. A similar pattern is seen in Georgia, where 50% of films viewed are foreign (non-American), followed by 27% of audience share for national movies and 24% for American movies. In some countries, the audience for national films approaches similar levels as for films produced in the United States. This is the case in France, where 41% of films viewed are national and 46% are from the United States. In the United Kingdom, the share of national movies is 36%, which is relatively high for Europe. This can be partially explained by several sequels, including the Harry Potter series, being in the national and global Top 10."

"The digitization of movie production and their exhibition in multiplexes has been one of the primary reasons that cinema has continued to attract audiences to theatres in many parts of the world. At the same time, the cinema sector has had to face the impacts of the financial crisis of 2008, which slowed down growth in many sectors of the economy."

"As has been the case throughout the 2000s, in almost all countries feature films from the United States of America (USA) (or USA coproductions in conjunction with primarily European countries) dominated the Top 30 (see Table 1) in 2010 and 2011. Almost all of these films were distributed by the six major Hollywood studios (with 50% of them released in 3D). Furthermore, the number of animated releases aimed at child-youth audiences was significant, in addition to sequels, prequels and adaptations. The rise and importance of 3D films evident between 2005 and 2011. However, many of the films that are ranked from No. 15 to No. 30 are typically nationally-produced or non-USA-produced films,mostly distributed by local companies."

"World film production continued to grow from 2005 to 2011,with a 39% increase. During this period, about 100 countries produced professional feature films for theatrical release, with an average of 5,987 feature films being produced per year, as shown in Table 3. The figures also show that there has been stagnation in the world film production since 2008, with total film production remaining at around 6,500 releases per year over the last four years for which data are available."

"When analysed at the country level, the increase in the world film production is highly dependent on the Top 10 producers which represent around 65% of world production,as shown in Table 4. The countries with the highest increases in production between 2005 and 2011 were: China (260to 584, 124.6%), the United Kingdom (106to 299, 182.1%) and the Republic of Korea (87to 206,148.3%). Other countries with significant increases were: Germany (45.2%), Spain (40.1%) and Italy (58.1%). Outside of the Top 10, several countries showed important increases although the level of production was smaller, including: Brazil (42 to 100 films, 136%), Iran (26 to 76 films, 192%), Turkey (28 to 70 films, 150%), Viet Nam (12 to 75films,525%in 2010), and Mexico (71 to 111 films, 56.3%). The level of production for the rest of the world grew at a smaller rate between 2008 and 2011."

"Nigeria has a very high number of audiovisual productions (see Map 1)–on average releasing 966 films per year between 2005 and 2011 –but they are semi-professional/informal productions, most of them almost artisanal with limited or no theatrical release. While 1,074 films were produced in 2010 in Nigeria, national movies sold only 117,563 tickets (26% of market share of that year), in a country with a population of about 160 million inhabitants."

"Countries which do not have the facilities and resources to produce films for theatrical release are using video format to reach their audiences. As shown in Table 6, Nigeria–with an average production of 1,000 movies per year –is the third largest producer in terms of volume. As a result of new technology and video production, the emergence of new film producers, such as Mauritius, has been possible. While the country did not produce any feature films before 2009, Mauritius increased its production from 19 to 30 films between 2010 and 2011."

"Analysing all films, regardless of their format of production (theatrical release or video production) provides an overview of the cinema sector worldwide. Table 7 shows that global film production has increased significantly in recent times, with total production rising from 5,735 movies in 2005 to 7,442 in 2008. Production continues to grow but at a slower pace since 2008."

"There were 7 countries that had “very high” annual film production (more than 200 feature films) between 2005 and 2011, producing on average 3,561 films yearly and representing 57% of the world’s feature films. There were 11 countries that had a “high” level of film production (between 80 and 199 feature films per year), producing on average 1,259 feature films annually. The very high-and high-level groups together accounted for 78% of global film production on average over this time period, representing the production of 4,820 films annually. The “average” production category (between 20 and 79 feature films per year)accounted for an average annual production of 16% of the world’s films. (1,013 films on average per year). Finally, one-half of countries were classified in the “low” or “very low” levels of film production. They accounted for 6% of total average annual feature films produced."

"Other countries with important increases in their box offices overthe period 2006 to 2011 include: Belarus, Romania,Ukraine and Venezuela. Several Latin American, East European and Asian markets doubled their box office during this period. Nevertheless, the majority of these countries represent small markets and the increase in some of them is explained by high inflation rates, as is the case for Argentina,Belarus and Venezuela."

"Although it may appear that ticket prices in developing countries are low, when compared with the average income and the cost of living, ticket prices in these countries are relatively high compared to developed countries: one trip to the movies with friends or family can represent almost 10% of monthly income (González, 2012)."

"As Iberoamerican expert Octavio Getino said, “Never have people watched so many movies... but mainly not in theaters” (Getino, 2012)."

"[O]ver the last several years the exhibition market in India has changed, possibly accounting for variations in the film market. The main change in the exhibition market is the multiplex (Pendakur, 2012). In India, there still is a plethora of mono screens in the southern half of the country, with an average ticket price of US$ 0.50. These screens are still the most popular for Indian moviegoers. Around 1,000 multiplexes have emerged in large Indian cities, with a ticket price of around US$3.30. These multiplexes account for most of the Indian revenues generated for Hollywood blockbusters. Nevertheless, films from USA account for no more than 7% to 10% of the Indian box office (Ernst & Young-India Film Council, 2012). Additionally, no Hollywood films are in the Indian Top 10 films."

"The difference between box office and admissions is even clearer when analysing BRIC countries (Brazil, the Russian Federation, India and China). While BRIC countries accounted for 9% to 17% of world box office, the rate for admissions was impressive, between 49% and 56%: BRIC countries accounted for one-half of global admissions (mainly, because of India) between 2006 and 2011."

"[C]ountries that had the fewest number of screens in 2007 were almost exclusively from Africa. Nevertheless, some countrieswith fewscreensin other regions still had important markets,such as China, India and the Russian Federation. Latin America also generally has a low number of screens, but two countries stood out: Bolivia (2005) and Paraguay (2006). This is a more recent situation, because until the 1970s Latin America had many screens distributed all over its territories (Getino, 2005)."

"In 2007, the USA accounted for 70% of all digital screens; by 2001, the share had dropped to 46%. The greatest growth occurred in Europe. In the 2000s, the mainstream film industry (Hollywood and multinational companies) declared that digitization of screens would reduce copy fees and other related costs, opening more theaters, penetrating territories with a low level of screens, allowing national film producers and filmmakers in developing countries to increase their market share and reinforcing cultural diversity (De Luca, 2004, 2009)."

"Over the few last decades, the rate of economic growth of the Chinese economy has been enormous compared to most,if not all,economies in developed countries. As a result, this growth has been evident in the film market, where by 2012 China became the second largest consumer of feature films in the world in terms of box office.During the same period, the USA market has faced stagnation or experienced little increase in terms of admissions. If this trend continues, China will surpass the USA as the world’s Number 1film market by 2020.The film market in China has grown four to five times faster than its GDP over the last decade (and its GDP is one of the fastest growing in the world)and the growth in the film market has been even more impressive. In fact, between 2005 and 2011, box office in China grew on average by 43% per year (50% over the 2008-2011 period), while the cinema market box office of the USA grew on average by just 2.2% annually (see Figure 5). The difference in the number of admissions is remarkable: while admissions grew on average by 15.6% annually in China between 2005 and 2011, in the USA market there was an annual average decrease of -1.4% (see Figure 6). This growth occurred despite the dramatic increase in ticket prices that occurred in China during this period. The average admission price in China multiplied 3.5 times, an increase of 253% between 2005 and 2011, whereas the average ticket price in the USA increased by only 23.8%."

"One of the reasons for the sharp increase in the number of cinema admissions in China has been the prodigious growth of its economy and the increase in the standard of living and disposable incomes of the middle class. These newly wealthy citizens can now afford to go to the cinema to enjoy both national and foreign movies. This growth has spurred the continual and rapid construction of theatres: “China is building something like 10 screens a day”, said Christopher Dodd, MPAA chairman and CEO on March 2013 (The Hollywood Reporter, 2013). And despite the tremendous increases in average ticket prices, Chinese spectators continue to fill theaters.Although the number of new multiplexes has risen steadily, China is still lacking screens (as seen in Section 3.3) in comparison to its population and market. In 2011, China had approximately 2,000 theaters and 9,286screens across the country –making it the second largest national exhibition market in the world. However, this represents only one screen per every 136,000 people. In contrast, the USA had approximately 40,000 screens in 2011,with a population of approximately 280 million, representing one screen per every 7,000 people. China will need to construct some 170,000 screens to reach the same level of screen density as in the USA."

"The Latin American film market shows contrasting situations between countries. On the one hand, there are countries that in the last decade have more than doubled the number of screens, admissions and/or box office (i.e.Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru). Brazil entered the world Top 10 list with the highest admissions of any Latin American country during the last decade, while Mexico has the fifth largest number of screens in the world. On the other hand, some countries encountered modest growth or even stagnation in the number of screens available (i.e. Argentina and Uruguay)."

"Viewers in Latin America have access to about 9,756 screens. On average,there are 210 commercial releases per year. Depending on the country, between 5 and 130 national films are produced a year, primarily as a direct result of the national support received by the governments of the region over various decades. During the first decade of the 21st Century, Latin American countries produced 2,400 feature films (see Figure 8), with growth throughout each decade (on average 350 films were produced per year between 2005 and 2011). This is a sharp increase from the 1980s, when on average 230 films were produced annually or the 1990s with 90 films per year (Getino, 2005). Film production in Latin America increased partly as a direct result of the public policies developed to support the field (with the exceptions of Paraguay and a few Central American countries). These policies have been present in most of the subcontinent since the 1930s (mainly in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru). The subsequent decades saw further support in the form of subsidies, tax incentives,soft loans, prizes for quality and screen quotas (there were even state producers, state distributors and state exhibitors, mainly in Mexico from the 1940s to 1970s and in Brazil in the 1970s). In the early 1990s, most countries in the region experienced a drastic reduction in public support, affecting the national film sectors negatively. Nevertheless, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a re-emergence of public policies favorable to the film sector, mainly in relation to production. The three major film-producing countries, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico,resumed their growth. During the 2000s, most Latin American countries implemented national legislation supporting the film sector. Argentina and Brazil returned to maximum production peaks with over 100 films produced annually, surpassing records set in the earlier “golden years”. Mexico also increased film production, but the country is only just reaching the number of films produced during its golden years (between 1940 and 1980), which was also about 100 annually. Other Latin American countries showed more modest increases in the number of films produced. Due to new national film policies in some of these countries, they have begun regular production of films for the first time in their history."

"Within Latin America, there is an important and hidden level of semi-professional, almost artisanal, production of feature films,especially in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Like “Nollywood”, these films which are not released in theatres but rather circulated via street vendors or streaming on-line (mainly YouTube) are viewed by large audiences,with some titles becoming popular “hits”."

"The cinema market in Latin America has faced drastic changes over the last few decades. Up until 40 years ago, national private companies dominated the Latin American film markets, especially exhibition. Through globalization, film distribution and exhibition are now mainly controlled by Hollywood studios and the multinational companies associated with them (Guback 1969, Getino, 1984-1987,Rey, 2005). In Latin America, there are fewer numbers of movie goers: the frequency of attendance in the region is on average 0.8 movies per year per person, except in Mexico (1.7), a country that has the fifth largest exhibition market of the world. Nevertheless, box office showed an increase of 127% during the 2000s, due mainly to the constant increase in cinema ticket price: prices doubled during the last decade (due primarily to the cost of 3D screening which typically is at a premium price)."

"The number of screens in Latin America grew on average by 65% in the 2000s. This percentage was led by Mexico and to a lesser extent;Brazil and Colombia (see Figure 11). This growth took place in a context of high geographic and class concentration, in addition to the high cost of tickets –in Latin America just one family outing to the family represented the equivalent of 10% of average local monthly income. Nevertheless, Latin America still remains “under screened”, including the giant Brazil, which has only around 2,500 screens fora population of almost 200 million inhabitants,representing only 1.1screens per 100,000 inhabitants. Regardless of whether one country has more or fewer screens, the geographic concentration of the screens is extremely important in all Latin American countries. In Mexico, only 7% of cities had a screen, and in Brazil, the second largest Latin American exhibition market, only 10% of cities had a theater (González, 2011). These patterns are especially acute in digital cinema through its flagship: 3D (the vast majority of Latin American digital screens are 3D). In 2007, 19 screens were digitized in Latin America. Since 2008, especially 2009, many digital screens opened in the entire region. Nevertheless, the rate of digitization in the region remains one of the lowest in the world (22% in 2011) (see Figure 12)."

"This analysis has highlighted some unique trends in the global cinema sector. First, there is a tendency for the “global film industry” (dominated by Hollywood productions) to produce sequels, prequels and adaptations (non-original ideas) that are targeted to mass media, children and youth, resulting in a concentration of world production. Second, film production is highly concentrated with 7% of the countries with regular film production making 55% of all feature films globally. India itself produced 20% of all films worldwide. Blockbusters outside of the USA have mainly been USA-produced comedies, breaking records all over the world. National productions or coproductions that are not distributed by Hollywood major studios have had almost no circulation beyond national borders. In the period 2005-2011, world admissions dropped by 12.8%, while box office revenues rose by 27.8% (average ticket price increased by 46%, especially since the 3D boom). Market concentration is still very high; Top 10 countries represented around 75% of world box office and 85% of world admissions. The concentration for admissions slowly increased from 85% to 90% between 2005 and 2011. Similar to patterns in the world macro-economy, the BRIC group (Brazil,the Russian Federation, India and China) is increasing its market share of the world film market (both production and admissions). China is the main star of this story: based on conservative estimates, by early 2020 the Asiatic giant will surpass USA as the main film market in the world. Other regions, like Latin America , have improved their film market indicators, but they are still low (except for Brazil and Mexico) in comparison to other regions. There are many individual countries that had impressive box office growth (21 countries with increases from 102% to 556%), in comparison with admissions rises (10 countries increasing from 100% to 156%). In other words, the world film screen market is losing spectators but increasing revenues–mainly due to increased ticket prices. In the context of many large countries,such as China, the Russian Federation and India,“lacking cinema screens, the development of their cinema infrastructure could give a push to the world film market”(Miller, 2008)."

"It ... appears that there is no antisocial theme too base for some in the video-game industry to exploit."

"In my opinion, RapeLay's storyline went too far. However, if a game creator wants to express something and create content out of it, a government or public entity shouldn't have the power to restrain it."

"X Circle X X Double Left Square Right Trigger Down Square Square."

"Few good computer games have been written so far. Of the good ones, some are computer adaptations of games like Chess and Othello which existed first in another form. These games are good if they add a dimension to the play of the game that is not present in its original form, (such as the possibility of solo play), and do so in an aesthetically pleasing form. My personal opinion is that such computer adaptations will play a trivial role in the future of computer games and the best ones will be those which take unique advantage of the computer capabilities."

"Since we’ve figured to some extent how these pieces of the brain that handle addiction are working, people have figured out how to juice them further and how to bake that information into apps."

"Someday there's going to be a genius—an absolute genius—who writes something so brilliant, so involving, so magnificent, that you'll just weep for joy."

"Dave: Hey, what's going on? What are you two doing? Larry: We're just playing this really cool computer simulation game, where you get to interact with thousands of people in a virtual world. You can earn virtual money and buy virtual property, and... Dave: Oh, yeah, yeah, I heard about this game. I heard it's so realistic that you guys can't get dates there, either"

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."

"We level designers — you would come and explain what it is that the goal would be. This level should look like Piranesi, the famous architect. We’d go and look at books and try to come up with a level that looked like Piranesi. You’d come by and shake your head and we’d go back to look at books again. I used to wonder, why is Amy mad? And it wasn’t until I became a creative director myself that I understood the curse of being a creative director, which is this: you have the vision for the game. You know what it is you want to be making. You explain it to someone. If they get it instantly, you’ll never see that person again on the project, because you don’t need to communicate. The brilliant people on the project who are — realistically you’ll see them three times in the course of the game. If you have a masterful UI designer and you can explain the vision, you’re done. You spend your time almost exclusively with the people who don’t understand what you’re trying to do. That’s the load you bear. And so we just didn’t get it."

"We need to treat violent video games the way we treat tobacco, alcohol, and pornography."

"There have been four decades of research on the effect of media violence on our kids and it all points to the same conclusion -- media violence leads to more aggression, anti-social behavior, and it desensitizes kids to violence. The American Academy of Pediatrics summed up this point in a report entitled Media Exposure Feeding Children's Violent Acts. "Playing violent video games is to an adolescent's violent behavior what smoking tobacco is to lung cancer," it said. This isn't about offending our sensibilities -- it is about protecting our children."

"We know that violent video games have an impact on children. Just recently there was cutting edge research conducted at Indiana University School of Medicine, which concluded that adolescents with more exposure to violent media were less able to control and to direct their thoughts and behavior, to stay focused on a task, to plan, to screen out distractions, and to use experience to guide inhibitions."

"Art is subjective; it’s in the eye of the beholder. I think video games can be fun. They can teach eye-hand coordination and strategy and they can introduce children to computer technology. And there is no doubt they are intricate and sophisticated technologically. I’m not in any way trying to do away with video games. I’m strictly concerned with a small subset of games that are harmful to children — those that are excessively violent and sexually explicit. I want to make sure children can’t obtain these games without their parents’ consent."

"It's almost entirely women being threatened in ."

"In-depth research into the behaviour of about 100 13- and 14-year-olds found over-exposure to violent games weakened empathy for others."

"Many teenagers could play these games without any evidence of a change in attitude. And non-violent games seemed to have no adverse effects on "moral reasoning", regardless of time spent. But the problems arose with teenagers who spent more than three hours every day in front of a screen, continuously playing these violent games without any other real-life interaction."

"For these screen-obsessed teenagers, the researchers say that parents should try to put them in social situations where they have to see other people's perspectives or needs, such as charity work."

"What quickly becomes obvious is that The Witcher is very much a PC-exclusive game, which are typically designed to be as complex and unintuitive as possible so that those dirty console-playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC-gaming master race."

"It was intended to be ironic, to illustrate what I perceived at the time to be an elitist attitude among a certain kind of PC gamer. People who invest in expensive gaming PCs and continually spend money to make sure the tech in their brightly-lit tower cases is up to date. Who actually prefer games that are temperamental to get running and that have complicated keyboard interfaces, just because it discourages new or 'casual' players who will in some way taint the entire community with their presence. I meant it as a dig."

"Much of the conversation—if I can even call it that—has been a toxic sludge of rumor, invective, and gender bias. The irony comes from people who claim to be challenging the ethics of game journalists through patently unethical behavior."

"That Ender could be tricked into believing a real battle scenario was a game-like video simulation is one of the most believable post-modern twists in modern science fiction, particularly considering how often the difference between our digital and "real" lives is debated and conflated. Ender becomes a "hero" in a supposed video game, something that embodies and magnifies fears about video games, both in 1985 when the book was published and today."

"Gaming culture has been pretty misogynistic for a long time now. There's ample evidence of that over and over again... What we're finally seeing is that it became so egregious that now companies are starting to wake up and say, "We need to stop this. This has got to change."

"Making political statements are for other people to do. We want people to smile and have fun when they play our games."

"It's true that Americans spend billions of dollars on video games every year and that the United States has the highest firearm murder rate in the developed world. But other countries where video games are popular have much lower firearm-related murder rates. In fact, countries where video game consumption is highest tend to be some of the safest countries in the world, likely a product of the fact that developed or rich countries, where consumers can afford expensive games, have on average much less violent crime."

"Unlike print, radio, television, or movies, video games are an interactive format that allows them to affect people differently than more traditional forms of broadcast media. Ian Bogost, a professor of media studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has argued that the interactive nature of video games makes them an inherently persuasive medium—a system of “procedural rhetoric” that encourages players to create abstract mental models for how systems work and to form judgments about those systems through the act of playing. The design of a game’s models and systems of interactions are intentional choices by the designers, and they set the terms for how a person encounters the game. One video game designer called this effort to induce a certain type of player reaction “emotion engineering” in the design process."

"Research has demonstrated that some game design choices improve the way people focus and increase feelings of well-being. Other design choices can trigger addictive behavior. While research is ongoing, experimental studies have shown that some military FPS games can cause players to become measurably more militarist in outlook. In a “realistic” military FPS game, the presence or absence of rules of engagement, for example, will dramatically change how the player approaches a mission. When the military itself consults on the design of such a game, this leads to a number of uncomfortable questions about why those choices were made."

"Today, the global video game industry is one of the world’s largest culture industries. According to market research firm IDC, the global video game market topped $179 billion in revenue in 2020, making it larger than the global film industry ($100 billion) and North American professional sports (around $75 billion) combined. Video games’ cultural impact skews young: According to the Entertainment Software Association, 70% of people under the age of 18 regularly play video games. Younger players also tend to be male: According to a Pew survey, almost twice as many young men regularly play games as young women. That doesn’t mean all players are young; 64% of players are between 18 and 54 years old—prime voting age."

"Obviously not all video game players are misogynist harassers, just as not all games are funded by the Pentagon to present tailored narratives about a controversial war. But all video games do present a worldview to the player, whether it is explicit or not, and understanding that world view can help us understand what the players themselves believe. As an inescapable part of public discourse and an enormous media market we ignore at our peril, video games are not just video games: They are the site of political contention, of negotiation over social boundaries, and of free speech itself."

"So when creating a character in the fore front of my mind is that this character is linked to the game design. So, you know, unlike the character design for an anime or a film or something – when we create a character it has to tie in with the game-play. So for example, Sonic is invincible while he is jumping. He turns into a ball and has all the spikes around him. So this is a visual representation of what is happening in the game."

"And another thing that has influence while creating a character is when I’m creating that character – what I think is cool at the time, of you know, is going around at the time around me in my environment or the industry would have an influence on me and what I think is cool. The overall output of the character design."

"In the old days, there wasn’t really like a formal process, but these days when we create a character we ensure to get input from for example SEGA Europe or from the marketing department. We get input from input from various parts of the SEGA business to ensure that this character that we create is something that will be loved by many people."

"But having said that, you know, the premise is this character that we come up with – that we are getting input on – there is what I want to achieve with that character and there is that at the forefront. There is this sort of core thing that we are working towards – that I am driving but I get feedback from the various parts of the business to ensure that it is something that will be done by many."

"Initially, the work centers on the vision of the game, both in terms of the story and the artistic style. Lots of story development meetings take place, and concept artists work to flesh out the designs and environments that will become a living world by the end of development. At the same time, the engine and technology is planned, and early work on the technical design is done."

"Once the technical and artistic vision of the game is planned, people can be brought onboard to start the main production work on the game. Artists build the environments, characters, and objects for the game world, and designers write the dialog and start making things function story-wise. The most difficult part of this stage is that everyone is working with partially complete technology, since the game programmers are also working to create the functionality of the engine and game systems. It's a careful sequencing of work that allows us to complete this stage, similar to trying to film a movie while technicians are still building your lights and cameras. Once the bulk of the work on the game is complete, the bug database starts to take over as the driving force in development. The list of remaining tasks starts to dwindle, and the team works through the enormous task of perfecting the millions of details that will make it a solid game. Quality assurance testers also take center stage, providing valuable feedback about what's fun and what's not, in addition to spotting bugs. Designers work throughout this phase to improve the balancing of the game, making it more fun and exciting with every day."

"Once all the bugs have been squashed and the testers are having lots of fun playing the game from beginning to end, the process of submission begins. A strict process of certification must be passed, and when complete, the game is ready for duplication and distribution, on its way to a store near you!"

"What you have to keep in mind as a collaborator — that’s why we get very uncomfortable when it seems like we’re getting singled out. We as game developers. It seems trite to say so, but it’s a group effort, a team effort. So much of it is being in the right place at the right time with the right people and the right ideas. It seems wrong for any person to be elevated like you’re the author of this thing. You can’t even remember sometimes whose ideas were what, because it’s this big messy wonderful process."

"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games."

"I think one of the most important attributes a designer can have is…not only the ability, but almost the unconscious constant experience of putting yourself in other people’s heads and watching them as they have an experience. Building an experience through the eyes of someone else is incredibly challenging. I think that’s what makes great designers. A bunch of my meta-points that I’ve drawn out over the last 20 years are about that, how you put yourself in other people’s shoes."

"There seems to be a lot of retro-game nostalgia in recent years. Perhaps it’s because so many gamers have reached that age where they want to look back, or maybe it’s because of how easy it is to tweet out ‘Hey, remember this!?'"

"I played the Mortal Kombat arcade game in their office for half an hour. I turned to [former Midway Games chief] Neil D. Nicastro and I said, “This is Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon. This is not just an arcade game. This is a whole phenomenon.” I said, “If you give me the rights to this, I promise you I will produce this, not just in movies, but in every medium in the world.” He looked at me and said, “You’re full of crap! It’s just an arcade game!” That began a three-month process of me trying to convince them that it was more than just an arcade game. They didn’t believe it… I finally just wore them down and they optioned the rights to me for an insanely short amount of time, which now I would never do, but it was my first deal at my company."

"We producers don't think that FFVIII is much harder than FFVII! However with FFVIII, we have tried to bring in a mode of play which requires more active thinking from the players. Yes, you can play it all the way through without thinking much about strategy or combination of energies but you have to move very, very slowly. However, if you become more involved with the game and think more 'actively', it's much more fun. The harder you think, the better you play. It's wrong to say simply 'easier' or 'harder'..."

"I think girls tend to like RPGs, like Final Fantasy. Girls who play games like that seem to get more of a desire to work in this field. I usually don't think to make games strictly for a female audience, myself, but I think my RPGs attract a larger female audience. Violent, war-themed titles seem to attract an overwhelmingly male audience. I think if companies want to get more girls to play their games, they should keep this in mind."

"As I'm a woman myself, when I make games, I try not to just have them be male fantasy figures, as people needing to be rescued. I like to make female characters people of both genders can relate to. But we are seeing more strong-willed women in games geared towards female audiences."

"Back in the day, Sega said we couldn't show our real names, thus everyone went under nicknames in the game credits."

"The concern that violent video games may promote aggression or reduce empathy in its players is pervasive and given the popularity of these games their psychological impact is an urgent issue for society at large. Contrary to the custom, this topic has also been passionately debated in the scientific literature. One research camp has strongly argued that violent video games increase aggression in its players , whereas the other camp repeatedly concluded that the effects are minimal at best, if not absent. Importantly, it appears that these fundamental inconsistencies cannot be attributed to differences in research methodology since even meta-analyses, with the goal to integrate the results of all prior studies on the topic of aggression caused by video games led to disparate conclusions. These meta-analyses had a strong focus on children, and one of them reported a marginal age effect suggesting that children might be even more susceptible to violent video game effects. At present, almost all experimental studies targeting the effects of violent video games on aggression and/or empathy focussed on the effects of short-term video gameplay. In these studies the duration for which participants were instructed to play the games ranged from 4 min to maximally 2 h (mean = 22 min, median = 15 min, when considering all experimental studies reviewed in two of the recent major meta-analyses in the field) and most frequently the effects of video gaming have been tested directly after gameplay."

"Taken together, the findings of the present study show that an extensive game intervention over the course of 2 months did not reveal any specific changes in aggression, empathy, interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, depressivity, anxiety or executive control functions; neither in comparison to an active control group that played a non-violent video game nor to a passive control group. We observed no effects when comparing a baseline and a post-training assessment, nor when focussing on more long-term effects between baseline and a follow-up interval 2 months after the participants stopped training. To our knowledge, the present study employed the most comprehensive test battery spanning a multitude of domains in which changes due to violent video games may have been expected. Therefore the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games. This debate has mostly been informed by studies showing short-term effects of violent video games when tests were administered immediately after a short playtime of a few minutes; effects that may in large be caused by short-lived priming effects that vanish after minutes. The presented results will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the real-life effects of violent video gaming. However, future research is needed to demonstrate the absence of effects of violent video gameplay in children."

"We always think of the road not taken, of something in the past. 'Wow, what would have happened if I married so and so, or took that job in San Diego…' But you rarely think that each and every second that goes by is one of those moments. Like this second that just happened. And that one. And the one that's going to happen in a second." Potentially, each of these seconds could alter a game in a profound way. Just as they can in life. The easiest thing for us to imagine is that our lives, and the story we are playing, are pre-designed, solid. But neither gaming nor life has to be like that. In both, we can alter and decide in a way that is surprising, ultimately freeing."

"Video games are meant for you to be immersed in an exciting and creative alternative reality and have fun with friends. Adding present-day political bullshit kills the vibe."

"Isn't it scary to think about the impact a game can have on people's lives? That said, I really admire them for the time, energy and money that they spend on their costumes..."

"That may be possible, but if there is no script, I will be out of a job! It will not be in the very far future that one character in a story will have full artificial intelligence, but I think it is pretty difficult to make all the characters with AI. That's in the very far future..."

"It's tough to "buy American" when a video game sold by a U.S. company has been developed by Japanese software engineers and packaged in Mexico."

"We know that women gamers face harassment and stalking and threats of violence from other players. When they speak out about their experiences, they're attacked on Twitter and other social media outlets, even threatened in their homes. And what's brought these issues to light is that there are a lot of women out there, especially young women, who are speaking out bravely about their experiences, even when they know they'll be attacked for it."

"We said we’d never make a video game unless we really did it hands-on. We’re both gamers, we both grew up as gamers and we both respect gaming as an art form, just like musical theatre so to us it wasn’t just ‘oh go and do something like that’. Once we’d finished Book of Mormon, South Park: The Stick of Truth really was our other big project, and right now it’s this."

"... if playing ultraviolent video games is one of your great pleasures in life, then virtual mayhem can become even more enjoyable in the wake of a biohappiness revolution – if you so desire. That said, as an embarrassed player of first-person shooters myself, I hope posthumans will do something more edifying."

"I used to go to game events and feel like I was going home ... Now it's just like... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?"

"This underrepresentation of women even pervades television commercials, where women not only appear less, but are also more likely to be portrayed as secondary characters supporting a male character when they are present (Ganahl, Prinsen, & Netzley, 2003). The same trend holds true for video games, where female characters are less likely to be heroes or main characters and, when they are included, they tend to dress in a manner consistent with stereotypes (Dietz, 1998). Female (vs. male) video game characters are also more likely to be sexualized and scantily dressed, while male characters tend to be hypermasculine and violent (Dill & Thill, 2007). And, consistent with research on other media effects, sexist content does affect consumers in a content-consistent manner. For example, media consumption in general (Swami et al., 2010) and frequency of playing sexist video games specifically are both associated with greater benevolent sexism (Stermer & Burkley, 2015). In another study, greater video game playing over one's lifetime was found to correlate with hostile sexism (Fox & Potocki, 2016). Together, the research shows that the way gender roles are portrayed in media can influence consumers’ own attitudes."

"GamesBeat: What do you think of the first-person shooter genre today?"

"GamesBeat: Do you like an open world better than a more story-based game? What do you think of those different directions?"

"Past video game play in excess of 3 h/wk correlated with 37% fewer errors (P<.02) and 27% faster completion (P<.03). Overall Top Gun score (time and errors) was 33% better (P<.005) for video game players and 42% better (P<.01) if they played more than 3 h/wk. Current video game players made 32% fewer errors (P=.04), performed 24% faster (P<.04), and scored 26% better overall (time and errors) (P<.005) than their nonplaying colleagues. When comparing demonstrated video gaming skills, those in the top tertile made 47% fewer errors, performed 39% faster, and scored 41% better (P<.001 for all) on the overall Top Gun score. Regression analysis also indicated that video game skill and past video game experience are significant predictors of demonstrated laparoscopic skills."

"Many studies show the link between playing ultra-violent video games and violent behavior. We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions."

"This industry has some profound issues in the way it treats women."

"Show me your children’s games, and I will show you the next hundred years."

"Video games are a prevalent and increasingly expressive medium within modern society. In the forty years since the introduction of the first home video game, the field has attracted exceptional artistic talent. An amalgam of traditional art forms—painting, writing, sculpture, music, storytelling, cinematography—video games offer artists a previously unprecedented method of communicating with and engaging audiences."

"Of course another layer of challenge came from the fact that, like most other developers at that time, we were still feeling our way with 3D. Things like camera and character control presented a lot of interesting new challenges and required us to try out a number of approaches before we settled on solutions that seemed to work."

"Playing video games is like playing tennis or running or traveling. It’s an interest. When a couple participates in a hobby together it’s exciting. The more a couple has in common, the more validated they feel by one another."

"What’s great about games in particular is that it’s a socially acceptable way for adults to imagine. Take for example a fantasy that has you as a big, burly weapons expert. You run through buildings gunning down bad guys, saving the day and becoming a hero. “If you start telling all your coworkers that you just imagined that, they’d think you were certifiable."

"Games can be art, and they can be significant and all the glorified things that we want them to be,” Swift said. “But if you ask a kid if their toys are important, they’ll say yes, and please don’t take them away."

"Unlike novels or movies, video games are an interactive medium where the player's actions drive the story forward, so I had actually wanted to allow players to manipulate the evidence themselves earlier on in the series."

"It feels like the gamers are finally in charge of our games. I like that. I trust that crowd so much just because of our Kickstarter campaign. We never approached our audience this way. Usually we make a game and it’s like we gift it to the players. But this time the players gifted us with the ability to make the game. And like all of my successes, PencilTest and the Kickstarter backers lifted the ceiling off of me. I hope I’ve done everyone right. I really want to honor the investment people have made in this game. It’s important that it succeed and it’s important that this model work for other games and developers too."

"Work hard. That’s the thing that most people who love games and animation may not realize about what they’re seeing. It requires an ugly amount of work. You have to dedicate your life to it, but I believe almost anyone can learn how to make games and animate at a competent level. I don’t believe in following your dreams and going into too much fairy dust about the arts. Sure, it’s fun, but there are many times it’s not fun and you still have to do it."

"I have very strong opinions on that, and it's kind of my area of expertise. The reason why I got out of video games, or am at least leaning away from video games (I just contract for them,) is really that a video game is a terrible place to tell a story. It's really because the reason we go to a game is different from the reason why we go to a more passive form of entertainment. And really a great story can be there, but it's optional. What must be there is good gameplay. And that's why at its core, I think it's inaccurate to call it some kind of sequential storytelling medium when, at its core, it's not necessary. If you get a guy who just good at drawing wacky cartoons, you've probably got in the wrong guy if your next game is going to see some Gothic horror. Yeah, I think in a way video games have gotten a really bad start with how expensive it became to develop in such a short amount of time. You know if you look at the budgets of what it cost to make a film in the first year that film was invented versus the fifth year or the 10th year the budgets didn’t go up astronomically. But if you look at video games, they went nuts and the original developers were working with this primitive technology and most games were done with under eight people in under a year for three quarters of a million dollars if you were lucky."

"By the ’80s, the early pioneering work done by female programmers had mostly been forgotten. In contrast, Hollywood was putting out precisely the opposite image: Computers were a male domain. In hit movies like “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Weird Science,” “Tron,” “WarGames” and others, the computer nerds were nearly always young white men. Video games, a significant gateway activity that led to an interest in computers, were pitched far more often at boys, as research in 1985 by Sara Kiesler, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, found. “In the culture, it became something that guys do and are good at,” says Kiesler, who is also a program manager at the National Science Foundation. “There were all kinds of things signaling that if you don’t have the right genes, you’re not welcome.”"

"The gaming industry has come under increased scrutiny following the December 2012 shootings in Newtown, Connecticut — a tragedy that has reignited the debate surrounding gun control and violent media. Vice President Joe Biden discussed the issue with game industry leaders earlier this year, while the National Rifle Association has taken a more pointed approach, singling out video games as a driver of violent culture. After the Newtown shooting, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre described the gaming industry as "a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.""

"The game company claims it has the legal right to depict branded weapons in its products, likening its games to novels and other narrative-based media. "We're telling a story and we have a point of view," Frank Gibeau, EA president of labels, said in an interview with Reuters. "A book doesn't pay for saying the word 'Colt,' for example.""

"Most studies on the impact of playing violent video games on mental health have focused on aggression. Relatively few studies have examined the relationship between playing violent video games and depression, especially among preadolescent youth."

"In the present study, we examined the association between daily violent video game playing over the past year and depression in a large, ethnically diverse preadolescent sample. We found that playing high-violence video games for ≥2 hours per day is significantly associated with having a higher number of depressive symptoms. This association was consistent across all racial/ethnic subgroups and among boys, and more important, it was observed after controlling for aggression and several violence-related variables. The magnitude of these associations was small (Cohen's d values ranged from 0.12 to 0.25). However, these effect sizes are similar to those reported for the association between playing violent video games and aggression. Overall, our findings indicate that playing violent video games for a substantial amount of time each day over an extended period is significantly associated with depression in preadolescent youth. They also suggest that this association is unique, given that the number of depressive symptoms was not associated either with playing low-violence video games or with time spent playing video games in general."

"In conclusion, we found that, compared with playing low-violence video games for <2 hours per day, playing high-violence video games for ≥2 hours per day was significantly associated with a higher number of depressive symptoms among preadolescent youth. However, the magnitude of the association was small and a causal relationship cannot be inferred. Nevertheless, it should be noted that even these small effect sizes can be of practical importance considering the large number of preadolescent and adolescent youth who regularly play violent video games. More studies are needed to examine the association between playing violent video games and depression in general and among boys in particular. If this association were confirmed, longitudinal studies would then be needed to investigate its causality, persistence over time, underlying mechanisms, and clinical implications."

"Games are still considered to be in the sub-culture category, coming under movies, coming under manga or comics or animation, especially in Japan. So, hopefully we'll be able to establish our own position that can be established as a culture."

"Even in Japan, I don't think that the game culture is established. So, probably the users are kids in school, even adults, I'm not sure up to which age they are. For example, my father will watch movies but games don't appear in his life at all, I think that that's sad. Even though we can create something really good, our parents wouldn't be able to understand what we do."

"Video games are taking over the world, and they're doing it in style. We're winning because we offer something better than art. We offer Experience."

"When I write a game, I try to make you feel like you have power. Then I try to make you feel the awesome, terrifying responsibility of having power. When I force you to make a tough decision, for a brief moment, I can reprogram your brain and take your thoughts somewhere they've never been before. This is amazing. That is, at heart, what the games we make are. They are tools we creators use to compel and rewrite your brains. We haven't begun to come to terms with the power we've unleashed with these toys, these addiction machines."

"Video games should not interest or impress you. We should scare you. Video games are taking over the world. You haven't even seen a fraction of what we can do."

"Videogames? In the sixties, that meant To Tell the Truth and What's My Line? Today, a lot of the apparatus we had in Batman - dressed, of course, in less imposing names - is fact. And we're lucky this is so. My present-day fascination with videogames does not derive from personal affection. I prefer working our and skiing to playing videogames. But that's a personal preference, not a value judgement. I happen to think that videogames are an ideal means to help broaden the imaginations of young people."

"Needless to say, adventure characters should be just one facet of videogaming. In the same way a painting allows us to gaze upon the faces and souls of people from another age, or a book permits us to linger on the thoughts of great figures from history and fiction, videogames can expand our awareness of the world as it is, was, or might be. The medium is still in its infancy, but read this again in a few years and see if this prediction hasn't come true: as videogaming grows, we will grow."

"Everything about the games industry sends the signal: ‘this is a space for men’. When players are repeatedly shown that women are sex symbols and damsels in distress, is it any surprise that players go on to treat women poorly in real life?. Gamergate feels like it owns the culture. Women and minorities are only welcomed if they keep their identity silent and don’t try to change the status quo. If I am a feminist, I am an outsider trying to steal their games – even if I am an avid gamer and a developer. I worry about becoming known to people outside the industry. As I gain experience in speaking, writing articles, publicising my game, I am increasing the risk of abuse. I stopped playing online games years ago. I couldn’t see why I was putting myself through the torrent of abuse, and sexual messages. Today, instead of them directing their abuse at a gamer tag, they will be contacting me directly, by email, Twitter, Facebook, and maybe anyone else that associates with me."

"The occasional awful movie can be chalked up to bad directing/acting/writing/etc., but why have traditional screen adaptations of video games been consistently terrible? I suspect a huge part is simply due to the difficulties of translating across mediums; video games are very different from a show or a movie, and turning a good game into a good show is way more difficult than it seems. Shows and movies do not require any input from the watcher outside of pressing the “Play” button, whereas games are very interactive (and a lot of times the story is also integrated into gameplay). So to turn a video game into a movie or a show requires removing essentially its core element, the “game” part, so everything else needs to be really good to make up for it, especially the writing, as there is no longer gameplay to carry the experience."

"I shrink it down by myself, actually. It's up to the schedule, so... If the artists or programmers say "no", then that's the answer. So it's kind of a mix. I always try to push a can-do attitude with them, you know?"

"Medal of Honors "authentic action" is a selling point for Electronic Arts. (Electronic Arts and the other companies in this story did not agree to be interviewed on tape.) To get a military man's take on the authenticity of these games, NPR spoke with Navy veteran, gun owner and war gamer Nathan Zelk. "Games today are very, very real," Zelk says. "It's the weapons; it's the story lines, you know, that people get caught up in — even the optics that are used on the guns, it says L-3 EOTech. It actually has the name of the brand on the side of it so you know which optic, you know, you could go out and buy." But Zelk says not everything in the games is based in reality. "When you get trained in the military, you're taught about [the] use of lethal force. It's a very big deal in the military — you don't draw your weapon on anybody unless there's [an] imminent threat to you, your crew, your ship that you're on, those type of things.""

"Several theoretical perspectives explain how exposure to computer games, especially violent games, can lead to imitative behavior. It is clear why these theories of TV violence might easily be applied in a gaming environment. Perhaps the most comprehensive theory to date is the general aggression model (GAM), which comprehensively integrates central elements from several earlier aggression theories. Included in the model are elements of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1994), which focuses on the audience member's attention to the modeled behavior, retention of that behavior, ability to imitate, and motivation to imitate the behavior. Furthermore, social cognitive theory concentrates on the model, noting that admired and rewarded models are more likely to be imitated. As such, the theory focuses on both the contextual cues (e.g., whether violence is rewarded) and the cognitive structures that lead to imitation. Script theory (Huesmann, 1986) is also integrated into the general aggression model. Script theory focuses on learned and activated scripts, arguing that we might learn to respond to situations in particular ways based on situations that have been repeatedly modeled for us. Therefore, in a new situation (e.g., a conflict), we might draw on scripts observed in the media, such as those containing violence. Also included in the general aggression model is cognitive-neoassociative priming theory (Berkowitz, 1993; Berkowitz & Heimer, 1989), which draws largely on network models of memory. Given that memory is organized through a network, ideas can prime or active related thoughts. Berkowitz argued that exposure to media violence, especially over long periods of time, could serve to create a rich, intricate memory network of hostility and violence for heavy viewers. The result, according to priming theory, is that exposure to media violence could then readily activate hostility and aggressive thoughts. In addition to cognitive-neoassociative priming theory, Green's affective aggression model (1990 explains that increased in aggression after exposure to media violence could result in hostility and negative affect. Furthermore, Zillmann's (1983) excitation transfer model focuses on the mechanism of physiological arousal as the cause of increases in aggression after exposure to violence."

"The general aggression model also explains that exposure to videogame violence can increase aggressive behavior both in the short and long term by noting that aggression is largely based on existing knowledge structures or existing mental scripts that are created by the process of social learning (Anderson et al., 2004). That is, individuals can learn new skills and information by watching the behaviors of others, especially if those behaviors are rewarded, performed by attractive actors, or do not cause pain or suffering fort the victim of aggression (i.e., sanitized violence). In the short term, both personological and situational input variables can lead to aggressive behavior. Personological variables include personality variables such as aggressive disposition, current states, beliefs, attitudes, and so on. Situational variables are found in the environment surrounding the person and include factors such as aggressive cues (e.g., playing a violent videogame), being provoked, or feeling pain. Both of these inputs can impact the present internal state of the person. For example, aggression may become more likely if an individual has an aggressive disposition and also plays an aggressive videogame. This may lead to feelings of hostility. Then, given the opportunity to retaliate against someone who has insulted the person, for example, that individual may behave more aggressively than someone without those personological or situational factors in place."

"Cantor (1994) has used Piagetian developmental theory in order to explain and predict what images frighten children at different stages of cognitive developmental progress. Wilson and Weiss (1991) have also used Piagetian developmental theory in order to understand children's responses to news media. Kremar and colleagues (Kremar & Cooke, 2001; Kremar & Valkenburg, 1999) have utilized Kohlberg's theories of moral development in order to understand how children of different ages respond to depictions of interpersonal violence in the media. Because Kohlberg argues that judgments about right and wrong are based on a different decision matrix for children of different ages, it makes sense that how children interpret violence, a potentially immoral act, may differ for younger versus older children. For example, children younger than age 5 tend to use the guidance of an authority figure in order to determine between right and wrong or may simply consider the outcome of an action in making such a judgement. Older children, in contrast, may consider the motive of the actor in order to decide whether an act was wrong (Kohlberg, 1984). In summary, child development, whether studied in the context of cognitive development, moral development, or emotional or social development, has provided a solid framework-one that focused on the child more than on the medium-to understand the responses of a group that is qualitatively different from its adult counterparts."

"The research on computer and videogames and children has received considerable research attention in recent years. The earliest work examined the simple relationship between computer game play and aggression, whereas more recent research has utilized an experimental approach in order to test issues of causality between the two. For example, early research found a correlation between overall videogame exposure and real-world aggressive behavior in children from 4th to 12th grade (Dominick, 1984; Fling et al., 1992; Lin & Lepper, 1987). Early experimental work (Cooper & Mackie, 1986; Irwin & Gross, 1995; Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gorden, & Rodasta, 1988; Silvern & Williamson, 1987) also found some support for the notion that violent videogame content can increase aggression; however, technological advances in the field of electronic gaming have rendered much of the very early research in this area all but obsolete. What does more recent research tell us? Violent videogames can influence aggressive cognitions (Anderson et al., 2004; Anderson & Dill, 2000; Kirsh, 1998; Tamborini et al., 2001), as well as aggressive affect, leading to feelings of hostility (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Tamborini et al., 2001), and have been found in survey research to be associated with aggressive delinquent behavior, even after controlling for aggressive behavior (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Anderson & Murphy, 2003; Anderson et al., 2004)."

"In their narrative review of the empirical literature, Dill and Dill (1998) concluded that short-term exposure to violent videogames increases aggression. Similarly, Bensley and Van Eenwyk (2001) conclude there is evidence that playing violent videogames can increase short-term aggression in young children. Meta-analyses conducted on the research on violent videogames have also supported an effect of game play on aggression. The first such comprehensive study was conducted by Anderson and Bushman (2001). Across all studies included in their meta-analysis, the authors found that exposure to violent videogames was positively associated with increased levels of aggression. Anderson (2004) recently updated with original meta-analysis and concluded that when only those studies with the soundest methodological approaches were used, results showed even stronger effect sizes, suggesting that methodologically weaker studies actually underestimate the true effects of exposure to volent videogames. Another meta-analysis by Sherry (2001) using 25 studies found evidence for a small effect of videogame play on aggression. However, Sherry also found that effect sizes have increased over time, with more current studies producing stronger effects, presumably due to the greater realism of today's games. Game type was also important, as games classified as human violence or fantasy violence were found to be more strongly related to aggression than sports games."

"Computers also appear to have an effect on visual intelligence. For example, playing Marble Madness, a game requiring children to visualize and manipulate objects in their minds, was found to enhance spatial skill (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 1994), although playing a game that requires the visual tracking of an object on a screen also improved this type of spatial skill outside of the computer environment (Greenfield, De Winstanley, & Kilpatrick, 1994); playing the computer game Concentration-a learning game-improved iconic representation skills (Greenfield et al., 1996). Therefore, there is some evidence that computers, even computer game play, can improve visual skills outside of the computer environment. However, for long-term positive effects to occur in the classroom, computers must be integrated into the classroom and not simply placed in it. Similarly, much research is needed on the use of computers in the home in terms of their influence on cognitive and academic growth in children."

"Good design is a Renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty to produce something."

"The urge for good design is the same as the urge to go on living. The assumption is that somewhere, hidden, is a better way of doing things."

"As a noun, design is the named (although sometimes unnamable) structure or behavior of a system whose presence resolves or contributes to the resolution of a force or forces on that system. A design thus represents one point in a potential decision space. A design may be singular (representing a leaf decision) or it may be collective (representing a set of other decisions)."

"When any great design thou dost intend, Think of the means, the manner, and the end."

"Disguise and complication are hindrances, both to good construction and good design, and as complication and disguise are expensive and wasteful... the interests of good art and true economy run on parallel lines."

"As in poetry and music, even the unskilled ear may be offended by a mistake in measure, without discerning the cause, may not also a mistake in the harmony of dimensions unconsciously offend us in design?"

"One of the best ways to economize in building is to economize on ugliness. ...Nothing can be greater service in avoiding ugliness than a knowledge of the principles of design."

"If the chief rules of good design were understood by the masses as they might be, nothing would do more to promote beauty, improve workmanship, add to the value of manufactures, and in many other ways further the general welfare and prosperity of the country. They are simple, easy to acquire, and should be taught with the alphabet."

"Giannino Castiglioni was a sculptor. His work was realistic, always tied to the human figure, not fantastic or unreal. He had an attitude of constant analysis of people's characteristics."

"They float before my soul, the fair designs Which I would body forth to Life and Power, Like clouds, that with their wavering hues and lines Pourtray majestic buildings:—"

"Design is to design a design to produce a design."

"Honest designs Justly resemble our devotions, Which we must pay, and wait for the reward."

"I consider my father a proto-designer."

"I think so many of the objects we're surrounded by seem trivial. And I think that's because they're either trying to make a statement or trying to be overtly different. What we were trying to do was have a very honest approach and an exploration of materials and surface treatment. So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think 'of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?' It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve."

"The more I learnt about this cheeky — almost rebellious — company, the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had reason for being that wasn't just about making money."

"People think it's this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

"I think that designers have an incredibly broad creative repertoire. They solve. They create images of perfection for any number of clients. I could never do that. I’m my client. That’s the difference between an artist and a designer; it’s a client relationship. And so, to me, it’s not a hierarchical order; it’s not like artists are better than designers, but it is a particular instrumentality, which makes for a difference."

"I think this will be as good a pattern for orders as I can think on. A little thin flowery border round, neat not gaudy, and the Drury Lane Apollo with the harp at the top."

"In a very real way, designers create the human environment; they make the things we use, the places we live and work, our modes of communication and mobility. Simply put, design matters. And at a moment in our history in which the scientific community has issued serious warnings about the negative impacts of our flawed designs-from global warming and water pollution to the loss of biodiversity and natural resources-designers have a critical role to play in the creation of a more just, healthful and sustainable world."

"Design is redesign."

"If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

"Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself."

"In their work, designers often become expert with the device they are designing. Users are often expert at the task they are trying to perform with the device. [...] Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made."

"There is a lot of modeling in my work, also because I am the son of Giannino Castiglioni, a sculptor, and I have always seen my father working with his hands, shaping material to gradually give it the desired form."

"The design process involves a series of operations. In map design, it is convenient to break this sequence into three stages. In the first stage, you draw heavily on imagination and creativity. You think of various graphic possibilities, consider alternative ways..."

"Good design looks right. It is simple (clear and uncomplicated). Good design is also elegant, and does not look contrived. A map should be aesthetically pleasing, thought provoking, and communicative"

"This is exactly the meaning of design: the conflict between form and content, form being the problem. [...] It is the coming together of form and content that is the realization of design."

"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan."

"I have always believed that fashion was not made only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence."

"Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artefacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training; it is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences. Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business, education, law, and medicine are all centrally concerned with the process of design."

"Today, the problem is not to produce more so you can sell more. The fundamental question is that of the product's right to exist. And it is the designer's right and duty, in the first place, to question the legitimacy of the product, and that is how he too comes to exist. Depending on what answer he comes up with, one of the most positive things a designer can do is refuse to do anything,"

"From a structural point of view, design is totally useless... I tried to give my products a little sense and energy. But even when I gave the best of myself, it was absurd."

"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation."

"If you believe that you are not a machine, but that I am (then) I do not know why you are reading this book"."

"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment."

"It is difficult not to wonder whether that combination of elements which produces a machine for labor does not create also a soul of sorts, a dull resentful metallic will, which can rebel at times."

"Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster."

"When a machine begins to run without human aid, it is time to scrap it - whether it be a factory or a government."

"A blacksmith, Thomas Newcomen, in collaboration with a plumber, John Calley, produced the first commercially successful machine for "raising water by fire." Newcomen could not have based his design on prevailing scientific theory, White argued, because his engine relied on the dissolution of air in steam, and "scientists in his day were not aware that air dissolves in water." Evidently "the mastery of steam power" was a product of empirical science and was "not influenced by Galilean science.""

"Leaving aside genetic surgery applied humans, I foresee that the coming century will place in our hands two other forms of biological technology which are less dangerous but still revolutionary enough to transform the conditions of our existence. I count these new technologies as powerful allies in the attack on Bernal's three enemies. I give them the names “biological engineering” and “self-reproducing machinery.” Biological engineering means the artificial synthesis of living organisms designed to fulfil human purposes. Self-reproducing machinery means the imitation of the function and reproduction of a living organism with non-living materials, a computer-program imitating the function of DNA and a miniature factory imitating the functions of protein molecules. After we have attained a complete understanding of the principles of organization and development of a simple multicellular organism, both of these avenues of technological exploitation should be open to us."

"Although it is not, abstractedly speaking, of importance to know who first made a most valuable experiment, or to what individual the community is indebted for the invention of the most useful machine, yet the sense of mankind has in this, as in several other things, been in direct opposition to frigid reasoning; and we are pleased with a recollection of benefits, and with rendering honour to the memory of those who bestowed them. Were public benefactors to be allowed to pass away like hewers of wood and drawers of water, without commemoration, genius and enterprise would be deprived of their most coveted distinction, and after-times would lose incentives to that emulation which urges us to cherish and practise what has been worthy of commendation or imitation in our forefathers; and to make their works, which may have served for a light and been useful to the age in which they lived, a guide and a spur to ourselves"

"It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome."

"The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men."

"Another scientific development that we find difficult to absorb into our traditional value system is the new science of cybernetics: machines that may soon equal or surpass man in original thinking and problem-solving. [...] In the hands of the present establishment there is no doubt that the machine could be used – is being used – to intensify the apparatus of repression and to increase established power. But again, as in the issue of population control, misuse of science has often obscured the value of science itself. In this case, though perhaps the response may not be quite so hysterical and evasive, we still often have the same unimaginative concentration on the evils of the machine itself, rather than a recognition of its revolutionary significance."

"Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines."

"We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action, of the machine we have created to serve us."

"Once upon a time we were just plain people. But that was before we began having relationships with mechanical systems. Get involved with a machine and sooner or later you are reduced to a factor."

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

"We must ask whether our machine technology makes us proof against all those destructive forces which plagued Roman society and ultimately wrecked Roman civilization."

"Lucca: Machines aren't capable of evil. Humans make them that way."

"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."

"I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered."

"You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers."

"It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."

"The preparation for the machine that took place between the tenth and the eighteenth century gave it a broad foundation and assured its speedy and universal conquest throughout Western Civilization. But in back of this lay the long development of technics itself: the original exploration of the raw environment, the utilization of objects shaped by nature--shells and stones and animal gut- for tools and utensils: the development of fundamental industrial processes, digging, chipping, hammering, scraping, spinning, drying: the deliberate shaping of specific tools as necessities pressed and as skill increased."

"The machine itself ... is a human product, and its very abstractions make it more definitely human in one sense than those human arts which on occasion realistically counterfit nature."

"The machine is no longer the paragon of progress and the final expression of our desires: it is merely a series of instruments, which we will use in so far as they are serviceable to life at large, and which we will curtail where they infringe upon it or exist purely to support the adventitious structure of capitalism."

"Looking back over the last thousand years, one can divide the development of the machine and the machine civilization into three successive but over-lapping and interpenetrating phases: eotechnic, paleotechnic, neotechnic … Speaking in terms of power and characteristic materials, the eotechnic phase is a water-and-wood complex: the paleotechnic phase is a coal-and-wood complex… The dawn-age of our modern technics stretches roughly from the year 1000 to 1750. It did not, of course, come suddenly to an end in the middle of the eighteenth century. A new movement appeared in industrial society which had been gathering headway almost unnoticed from the fifteenth century on: after 1750 industry passed into a new phase, with a different source of power, different materials, different objectives."

"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them."

"I think I should not go far wrong if I asserted that the amount of genuine leisure available in a society is generally in inverse proportion to the amount of labor-saving machinery it employs."

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."

"A machine, receiving at distant times and from many hands new combinations and improvements, and becoming at last of signal benefit to mankind, may be compared to a rivulet, swelled in its course by tributary streams until it rolls along a majestic river, enriching in its progress provinces and kingdoms. In retracing the current, too, from where it mingles with the ocean, the pretensions of even ample subsidiary streams are merged in our admiration of the master-flood. But, as we continue to ascend, those waters which, nearer the sea, would have been disregarded as unimportant, begin to rival in magnitude, and divide our attention with, the parent stream; until, at length, on our approaching the fountains of the river, it appears trickling from the rock, or oozing from among the flowers of the valley. So, also, in developing the rise of a machine, a coarse instrument or a toy may be recognized as the germ of that production of mechanical genius whose power and usefulness have stimulated our curiosity to mark its changes and to trace its origin. The same feelings of reverential gratitude which attached holiness to the spots whence mighty rivers sprung, also clothed with divinity, and raised altars in honor of the saw, the plough, the potter's wheel, and the loom."

"It’s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material – rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids – process them inside and produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine."

"Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel. Men have been led to it long ago by instinct or reason; it has been expressed in many ways, and in many places, in the history of old and new. We find it in the delightful myth of Antheus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians and in many hints and statements of thinkers of the present time. Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature."

"The particular ‘desire’ of the Eregion Elves—an ‘allegory’ if you like of a love of machinery, and technical devices—is also symbolised by their special friendship with the Dwarves of Moria."

"The mechanical philosophy is a case of being victimized by metaphor. I choose Descartes and Newton as excellent examples of metaphysicians of mechanism malgré eux, that is to say, as unconscious victims of the metaphor of the great machine. Together they have founded a church, more powerful than that founded by Peter and Paul, whose dogmas are now so entrenched that anyone who tries to reallocate the facts is guilty of more than heresy."

"Machines do not run in order to enable men to live, but we resign ourselves to feeding men in order that they may serve the machines."

"... the construction of machines, the functioning of which he can foresee, constitutes the most spectacular accomplishment of the physicist. In these machines, the physicist creates a situation in which all the relevant coordinates are known so that the behavior of the machine can be predicted. Radars and nuclear reactors are examples of such machines."

"Never before have people been so infantilized, made so dependent on the machine for everything; as the earth rapidly approaches its extinction due to technology, our souls are shrunk and flattened by its pervasive rule. Any sense of wholeness and freedom can only return by the undoing of the massive division of labour at the heart of technological progress. This is the liberatory project in all its depth."

"It appears that all the students who enter the school commence as if they were intended for artists in the higher sense of the word, and are not expected to decide as to whether they will devote themselves to the Fine Arts or to Industrial Design, until after they have completed their exercises in the drawing and painting of the figure from the antique and from the living model. It is for this reason, and from the fact that artists for industrial purposes are both well-paid and highly considered (as being well-instructed men), that so many individuals in France engage themselves in both pursuits."

"Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and, we may now say, London, together with many other cities in which periodical Exhibitions of Industrial Art take place, have not, as yet, any appropriate edifice - for these Exhibitions, but some temporary erection or already - existing building is fitted up for the purpose. When the multitude of productions as impose the necessity of an especial erection, it has been necessarily attended with great expense, which is the more objectionable since it is destined to be removed after a very brief existence. The King of Bavaria has been the first to see the necessity of an edifice constructed solely for Exhibitions of Industrial Art, and has, accordingly, caused to be erected a suitable building, of which we are enable to present an engraving. It was inaugurated on the 25th of last August, the King's birthday."

"Fine Art then, records by idealised imitation the glorious works of good men, whilst it holds those of bad men up to our abhorrence — it gives to posterity their images, either on the tinted canvass or the sculptured marble — it imitates the beautiful effects of nature as seen in the glowing landscape or the rising storm, and perpetuates the appearance of those beauteous gems of the seasons — flowers and fruits, which, though fading whilst the painter catches their tints, yet live after decay by and through his genius. Industrial Art, on the contrary, aims at the embellishment of the works of man, by and through that power which is given to the artist for the investigation of the beautiful in nature; and in transferring it to the loom, the printing machine, the potter's wheel, or the metal worker's mould, he reproduces nature in a new form, adapting it to his purpose by an intelligence arising out of his knowledge as an artist and as a workman. In short, the adaptation of the natural type to a new material compels him to reproduce, almost create, as well as imitate — invent as well as copy — design as well as draw!"

"INDUSTRIAL DESIGN is destined to become a universal language ; for in our material age of rapid transition, from abstract, to applied, Science — in the midst of our extraordinary tendency towards the perfection of the means of conversion, or manufacturing production — it must soon pass current in every land."

"The study of Industrial Design is really as indispensably necessary as the ordinary rudiments of learning. It ought to form an essential feature in the education of young persons for whatever profession or employment they may intend to select, as the great business of their lives; for without a knowledge of drawing, no scientific work, whether relating to Mechanics, Agriculture, or Manufactures, can be advantageously studied."

"The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war."

"In treating the subject a purpose has been kept in view, viz., to try to explain the principles involved in certain methods employed for the production of ornament, and this in order to guide the industrial designer to sure and certain results. To be successful the processes involved in the production of articles of manufacture must be understood, and to this the earnest attention of all interested in the improvement of manufacture should be directed. The abstract teaching of design is comparatively valueless, and success will only be achieved when to the taste of the designer the skill of the workman is united."

"Let us, then, take care of that art which is intended to penetrate into the houses of the lowly. In doing this we may rest assured, that that which is intended to embrace a more exalted position will not be forgotten. Let us not lose tight of the sentiment to nobly expressed by the poet — blind yet bold — when he says:—"

"It has been well observed that the world, more especially the English portion of it, during the last half century, has been in its working dress; that is to say, although we have done some very wonderful things in the way of mechanics, and have produced other things which are marvels of cheapness, yet as regards the production of really beautiful objects, particularly those required in every-day life, we have been behind most other epochs of civilization. Of course there is no prima facie reason why cheap things should be ugly, for a die or mould of a good design costs no more than a bad one; but still the fact remains that the objects in use in every-day life are not beautiful, and it is to effect a change in this respect that the Government have established Schools of Design and the excellent Museum of which I shall have to speak hereafter. Great praise must also be given to the Society of Arts for beginning the movement and carrying it on to the present time; and although the sphere of its action must necessarily be infinitely smaller than that of the Government Schools, yet we should always remember that the initiative of our great English exhibitions of industry came from the Society, and that it is to those exhibitions that we owe the stirring among the dry bones of industrial art which is now taking place."

"At the suggestion of the publishers, this work was undertaken to form one of their series of Dictionaries and Cyclopeadias. In this view, it has been the intention to make it a complete course of instruction and book of reference to the mechanic, architect and engineer. It has not, therefore, been confined to the explanation and illustration of the methods of projection, and the delineation of objects which might serve as copies to the draughtsman, matters of essential importance for the correct and intelligible representation of every form; but it contains the means of determining the amount and direction of strains to which different parts of a machine or structure may be subjected, and the rules for disposing and proportioning of the material employed, to the safe and permanent resistance of those strains, with practical applications of the same."

"The plan of the books is the first systematic effort made in this country to cover the whole field of Art Education for schools, by embracing every subject included under the head of Elementary Drawing. Pupils going through the course in all the subjects will be thoroughly grounded, and prepared either for practical industrial art or the further professional study of the fine arts."

"This question of industrial design is nearly distinct from the general Art education of the public, the former being very much a manufacturers' undertaking, while the other, being of the first importance, appeals to the community at large for sympathy and support."

"Our industrial design is very bad still — a great deal of it — though infinitely better than it was thirty years ago. So a great deal of our teaching of design may be, I fear is, unsound; but all the sound teaching we have is through such schools as this, and even in our errors there is, let us hope, instruction."

"The only way of reaping a harvest of good industrial design is by sowing the seed of good Art."

"The subject of industrial design is one of three important practical co-related subjects which should be taught in public schools, and to which practice and skill in drawing should be applied. Satisfactory results in this subject, however, depend entirely upon the manner in which it is taught. Instruction in industrial design means a clear presentation of the principles which obtain in the construction and harmonious arrangement of geometric form for decorative purposes, the proper use of plant forms in ornamental arrangements, and the principles of good taste to be found in the great history styles of art."

"There are many branches of manufacturing industry which greatly depend for their success upon the designer's art, and it is necessary that the industrial designer should possess a knowledge of the processes of the manufacture in which his designs will be utilized, as well as of the properties and capabilities of the material to which they will be applied."

"The course in industrial design is as follows: First year: Free-hand drawing — Drawing in outline from the flat, from groups of geometrical solids, from objects, memory drawing. Industrial design — Geometrical and free-hand designing in flat outline, historical ornament (ancient) . Mechanical drawing — Elementary perspective, practical geometry. Mathematics — Mensuration, ^first year), Euclid, book 1 (one term only). Second year Free-hand drawing — Drawing in light and shade from the flat and model, from groups of geometrical solids, from ornamental casts, from objects, memory drawing. Industrial design — Designing from plant forms in outline (flat), elementary color (flat), historical ornament (medieval). Third year: Free-hand drawing — Continuation of work of second year, drawing in monochrome, memory drawing. Industrial design — Plastic design, historical ornament (modern), history of design, clay modeling. Work in the special courses is intended largely to supplement the work done in the regular course, but it is of a much more practical nature."

"As architecture stands for parent design principles and represents some of the world's best examples of composition and design, industrial design should be based upon the best examples of architectural design."

"The designer of today, in most branches of art and particularly in the field of industrial design, needs more than vision and inspiration. This can be seen easily by anyone who will trouble himself to analyze the motif of some costly production and consider its chance to endure on the basis of artistic worth, rather than mere excellence of technical finish."

"In brief the industrial designer is a fashion designer of industrial products and is called upon by industry and manufacturers to "style" their products or to "streamline" them."

"Modern industrial design has advanced at a rapid pace during the last ten years. Its successes are no longer confined to objects which, like automobiles and airplanes, are themselves the product of new conditions. Modern design has also begun to conquer the traditional arts, and the feeling for abstract form, first expressed in our time in the works of Picasso, Braque, Brancusi, Duchamps-Villon in Europe, or Stieglitz, Benton, and Storrs for example in the United States, has finally entered architecture and the decorative arts."

"Modern industrial design is based on the principle of conspicuous economy [but] the bourgeois culture which dominates the Western World is founded... on the principle of conspicuous waste."

"One of the functions of an industrial designer is to bridge the gap between manufacturer and ultimate buyer."

"This book is aimed primarily at the young person making his choice of a vocation. It is also designed to give business executives and engineers a clear idea of how the industrial designer operates, what he can do for their business, and how much to expect from him after he has been engaged."

"The industrial designer is found in many fields of industry, which represent a wide diversity of manufactured products. Some of these fields are: Automobiles, airplanes, boats, trains, trailers, trucks; vacuum cleaners, washing machines, toasters, electric fans, lamps; furniture, hardware, electrical equipment; china, glassware, pottery; silverware; garden implements; farm machinery; tools of all kinds;"

"Industrial design is not necessary in the production of goods; but it makes goods more acceptable."

"A most important element for the consideration of the industrial designer is sales. There is only one reason for hiring an industrial designer, and that is to increase the sales of a product."

"In speaking and thinking of industrial design, care must be taken not to limit its application to the few obvious trades. Industrial design is important to every industry and its value in most hast already been demonstrated."

""Can we afford industrial design?" "Is the industrial design consultant merely a stylist ?" "Does the employment of a designer tend to raise the standard of design?" These questions leap to the mind. My friend, , Honorary r.d.i., has gone to a great deal of trouble in his answers to these questions..."

"Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the black and the designer busy."

"A lot of people are open to new things, as long as they look like the old ones."

"There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today. Industrial design, by concocting the tawdry idiocies hawked by advertisers, comes a close second. Never before in history have grown men sat down and seriously designed electric hairbrushes, rhinestone-covered file boxes, and mink carpeting for bathrooms, and then drawn up elaborate plans to make and sell these gadgets to millions of people. Before (in the “good old days”), if a person liked killing people, he had to become a general, purchase a coal mine, or else study nuclear physics. Today, industrial design has put murder on a mass production basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous breed."

"If there is a designer whose name is synonymous with industrial design it is Raymond Loewy (1893-1986)."

"What Charles and Ray Eames are to furniture design, Raymond Loewy is to industrial design—the modern master"

"Manufacturers are realizing that good industrial design is an important ingredient in their products' success and a vital factor in industrial competitiveness in both domestic and international markets."

"Industrial design is a big industry, so there are always new businesses opening up that have really exciting opportunities."

"If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever."

"Industrial design had its origins in the Industrial Revolution, when factory production began to supplant craft production of housewares, textiles, tools, and other consumer goods."

"Anything that can be automatically done for you can be automatically done to you."

"Besides black art, there is nothing left in the United States but automation and mechanization."

"As the bourgeoisie, by means of its capital, completely monopolizes all new inventions, every new machine, instead of shortening the hours of labor and enhancing the prosperity and happiness of all, causes, on the contrary, dismissal from employment for some, reduction of wages for others and an increased and intensified state of misery for the entire proletariat."

"Where you have machines, then you get certain kinds of problems; where you get certain kinds of problems, then you find a heart warped by these problems. Where you get a heart warped, its purity and simplicity are disturbed. When purity and simplicity are disturbed, then the spirit is alarmed and an alarmed spirit is no place for the Tao to dwell. It isn't that I don't know of these machines, but I would be ashamed to use one."

"If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, [...]; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves."

"AI and robots will replace all jobs."

"(About Amazon's plan to automate 75% of its operations) It’s insane to think that a human will pack and ship boxes in ten years — it’s game over folks."

"In the short term, AI will destroy a lot of jobs. In In the long term, like every other technological revolution, I assume we will figure out completely new things to do."

"If you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week, that’s probably OK. If you free up human labor, you can help elder people better, have smaller class sizes – you know, the demand for labor to do good things is still there. And then if you ever get beyond that, you have a lot of leisure time and you’ll have to figure out what to do with it."

"There’s going to be more free time. If you believe the premise that humans are social animals, they’re going to have to do something. They can’t just sit at home, so they’ll go to music, they’ll go to sports and they’ll go to my live event."

"The possibility of beckoning Martians was the extreme application of [my] principle of propagation of electric waves. The same principle may be employed with good effects for the transmission of news to all parts of the earth....Every city on the globe could be on an immense circuit. [Thus] a message sent from New York would be in England, Africa and Australia in an instant. What a grand thing it would be. - Nikola Tesla"

"Early in December [of 1900], we received from Lowell Observatory in Arizona a telegram that a shaft of light had been seen to project from Mars (the Lowell observatory makes a specialty of Mars) lasting seventy minutes. I wired these facts to Europe and sent out neostyle copies through. The observer there is a careful, reliable man and there is no reason to doubt that the light existed. It was given as from a well-known geographical point on Mars. That was all. Now the story has gone the world over. In Europe it is stated that I have been in communication with Mars, and all sorts of exaggerations have spring up. Whatever the light was, we have no means of knowing. Whether it had intelligence or not, no one can say. It is absolutely inexplicable. - Professor Pickering"

"I can never forget the first sensations I experienced when it dawned upon me that I had observed something possibly of incalculable consequences to mankind. I felt as though I were present at the birth of a new knowledge or the revelation of a great truth. Even now, at times, I can vividly recall the incident, and see my apparatus as though it were actually before me. My first observations positively terrified me, as there was present in them something mysterious, not to say supernatural, and I was alone in my laboratory at night; but at that time the idea of these disturbances being intelligently controlled signals did not yet present itself to me. The changes I noted were taking place periodically, and with such a clear suggestion of number and order that they were not traceable to any cause then known to me. I was familiar, of course, with such electrical disturbances as are produced by the sun, Aurora Borealis and earth currents, and I was as sure as I could be of any fact that these variations were due to none of these causes. The nature of my experiments precluded the possibility of the changes being produced by atmospheric disturbances, as has been rashly asserted by some. It was some time afterward when the thought flashed upon my mind that the disturbances I had observed might be due to an intelligent control. Although I could not decipher their meaning, it was impossible for me to think of them as having been entirely accidental. The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another. A purpose was behind these electrical signals; and it was with this conviction that I announced to the Red Cross Society, when it asked me to indicate one of the great possible achievements of the next hundred years, that it would probably be the confirmation and interpretation of this planetary challenge to us. Since my return to New York more urgent work has consumed all my attention; but I have never ceased to think of those experiences and of the observations made in Colorado. I am constantly endeavoring to improve and perfect my apparatus, and just as soon as practicable I shall again take up the thread of my investigations at the point where I have been forced to lay it down for a time. -Nikola Tesla"

"The idea naturally presents itself that mirrors might be manufactured which will reflect sunlight in parallel beams. For the time being this is a task beyond human power, but no one can set a limit to the future achievement of man... But there is one method of putting ourselves in touch with other planets... This combination of apparatus is known as my wireless transmitter... It is evident, then, that in my experiments in 1899 and 1900, I have already produced disturbances on Mars incomparably more powerful than could be obtained by any light reflectors, however large. - Nikola Tesla"

"To be sure, we do not have no absolute proof that mars is inhabited [...] Personally, I have my faith on the feeble planetary electrical disturbances which I discovered in the summer of 1899, and which according to my investigations, could not have originated from the Sun, the Moon, of Venus. Further study since has satisfied me they must have emanated from Mars. - Nikola Tesla"

"Others may scoff at this suggestion...[of] communicat[ing] with one of our heavenly neighbors, as Mars...or treat it as a practical joke, but I have been in deep earnest about it every since I made my first observations in Colorado Springs... At the time, there existed no wireless plant other than mine that could produce a disturbance perceptible in a radius of more than a few miles. Furthermore, the conditions under which I operated were ideal, and I was well trained for the work. The character of the disturbances recorded precluded the possibility of their being of terrestrial origin, and I also eliminated the influence of the sun, moon, and Venus. As I then announced, the signals consisted in a regular repetition of numbers, and subsequent study convinced me that they must have emanated from Mars, the planet having just then been close to the earth. - Nikola Tesla"

"[I have conceived] a means that will make it possible for man to transmit energy in large amounts, thousands of horsepower, from one planet to another, absolutely regardless of distance. I think that nothing can be more important than interplanetary communication. It will certainly come some day. and the certitude that there are other human beings in the universe, working, suffering, struggling, like ourselves, will produce a magic effect on mankind and will form the foundation of a universal brotherhood that will last as long as humanity itself. - Nikola Tesla"

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

"Although photosynthesis typically has an energy conversion efficiency below three percent, it is, together with heat from the sun, the main energy source of all living organisms, and the energy source from which biomass and fossil fuels are derived. Each year the earth receives an energy input from the sun equal to 15,000 times the world's commercial energy consumption and 100 times the world's proven coal, gas and oil reserves."

"There is one forecast of which you can already be sure: someday renewable energy will be the only way for people to satisfy their energy needs. Because of the physical, ecological and (therefore) social limits to nuclear and fossil energy use, ultimately nobody will be able to circumvent renewable energy as the solution, even if it turns out to be everybody’s last remaining choice. The question keeping everyone in suspense, however, is whether we shall succeed in making this radical change of energy platforms happen early enough to spare the world irreversible ecological mutilation and political and economic catastrophe."

"[The] solar-energy firm known as Solyndra, which the [[w:United_States_Department_of_Energy|[US] Energy Department]] had backed with a $535 million loan guarantee [made the] unexpected announcement last week that it is filing for bankruptcy, leaving hundreds of workers jobless - and taxpayers on the hook for almost all of its government-backed loan. . . . [I]t’s not too early to draw some policy lessons from Solyndra’s ignominious downfall. . . . [G]overnment is no better than the private sector at picking industrial winners - and usually worse. . . . To the extent that government creates jobs by subsidizing particular companies, it does so by shifting resources that might have created jobs elsewhere. Political favoritism, or the appearance thereof, is an inherent risk . . . . When "green jobs" promises don’t pan out, it does the environmental cause more harm than good."

"More solar energy falls on Earth in one hour than all the energy our civilization consumes in an entire year. If we could harness a tiny fraction of the available solar and wind power, we could supply all our energy needs forever, and without adding any carbon to the atmosphere."

"Renewable energy: dumbest phrase since climate change. See the first law of thermodynamics, dumbass."

"Every percentage point increase in homegrown renewable energy makes us that much more energy secure. The progress in electricity is encouraging, but growth is not yet strong enough in renewable heat and transport to meet the government's objectives."

"One of the real breakthroughs is when someone figures out long-term storage capacity."

"The only way you can get to the very positive scenario is by great innovation. Innovation really does bend the curve."

"If you told me that innovation had been frozen and we just have today's technologies, will the world run the climate change experiment? You bet we will. We will not deny India coal plants; we will run the scary experiment of heating up the atmosphere and seeing what happens. The only reason I'm optimistic about this problem is because of innovation. . . . I want to tilt the odds in our favor by driving innovation at an unnaturally high pace, or more than its current business-as-usual course. I see that as the only thing. I want to call up India someday and say, "Here's a source of energy that is cheaper than your coal plants, and by the way, from a global pollution and local pollution point of view, it's also better.""

"Cheaper coal and cheaper gas will not derail the transformation and decarbonisation of the world’s power systems. By 2040, zero-emission energy sources will make up 60% of installed capacity."

"We have long supported a carbon tax as the best policy of those being considered. Replacing the hodge-podge of current, largely ineffective regulations with a revenue-neutral carbon tax would ensure a uniform and predictable cost of carbon across the economy. It would allow market forces to drive solutions. It would maximize transparency, reduce administrative complexity, promote global participation and easily adjust to future developments in our understanding of climate science as well as the policy consequences of these actions."

"Rather than an eyesore on the roof, it becomes actually a feature of the home. People are going to start wanting to put {building-integrated photovoltaics} on the front side of their home to show that they have solar."

"[W]ind and solar power have been rapidly winning market acceptance. Last year, the installed capacity of solar power in the United States nearly doubled. And wind is now being harnessed to produce 5.5 percent of America’s electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration."

"The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world’s governments finally bring the engineers to the fore... I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke... the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely. “I don’t really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion... Tell us engineers the desired ‘specs’ and the timeline, and we’ll get the job done.” This is not bravado.... The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot."

"A carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future. . . . A consistently rising carbon price will encourage technological innovation and large-scale infrastructure development."

"Offshore wind's remarkable potential: The global offshore wind market grew nearly 30% per year between 2010 and 2018, benefitting from rapid technology improvements and about 150 new offshore wind projects . . . in active development around the world. . . . Yet today's offshore wind market doesn't even come close to tapping the full potential - with high-quality resources available in most major markets, offshore wind has the potential to generate more than 420,000 [terawatt-hours] per year worldwide. This is more than 18 times global electricity demand today."

"Offshore wind is in a category of its own, as the only variable baseload power generation technology. . . . Offshore wind output . . . hourly variability is lower than that of solar [photovoltaics]. Offshore wind typically fluctuates within a narrower band, up to 20% from hour-to-hour, than is the case for solar [photovoltaics], up to 40% from hour-to-hour."

"The clean energy portfolios of some of the largest corporate buyers rival those of the world’s biggest utilities. These companies are facing mounting pressure from investors to decarbonize - clean energy contracts serve as a way to diversify energy spend and reduce susceptibility to the tangible risks associated with climate change."

"[N]ew renewable power generation projects now increasingly undercut existing coal-fired plants. On average, new solar photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind power cost less than keeping many existing coal plants in operation, and auction results show this trend accelerating – reinforcing the case to phase-out coal entirely."

"I think it’s clear now that energy has to be clean. . . . And we should do it in ways that give jobs to everybody. . . . There’s so much to do in renewable power, there is so little to do in coal."

"An old proverb states: When the winds of change blow, some build walls . . . others build windmills. So, fellow windmill builders: Let’s push back on doubt and fear. Climate disasters worldwide tell us that the scariest thing we could do is nothing at all. . . . [W]e’ll all gain when we succeed - starting with jobs! We’re looking at a $23 trillion global market in the clean energy transition by 2030. . . . That means we can remake our economies, build new businesses, and put millions upon millions of people to work. . . . For too long, the climate conversation has been viewed as a zero-sum game. One of trade-offs: the climate or the economy. No longer."

"There are two practical ways to create the magic conditions that make fusion happen. One is called magnetic confinement fusion and the other is inertial confinement fusion. There’s gravity too, of course, but for that you need scales bigger than can be created on Earth: you need, quite literally, a star. The magnetic approach is to bind the hot matter in a reactor with an invisible web of magnetic fields. The inertial approach sets matter crashing into itself, thereby both heating and compressing it, and aims to get all the fusion done before the assembled star matter falls apart again. NIF {the National Ignition Facility} uses lasers to do this."

"There’s one aspect of the current fleet of magnetic fusion machines that is holding back progress. It’s a lesson that has been learned time and time again in fusion: . . . fusion works best on big scales. For conventional tokamaks, the confinement of plasma gets better the bigger the machine is. . . . When it is completed, ITER will be the world’s largest tokamak, and one of its key objectives will be to demonstrate net energy gain. It’s a behemoth. . . . ITER will take up 180 hectares (equivalent to 250 soccer fields), and when finished, its structure will have a mass equivalent to three Eiffel Towers."

"Future Outlook: Global offshore wind energy deployment is expected to accelerate in the future, with forecasts from 4C Offshore and Bloomberg New Energy Finance indicating a sevenfold increase in global cumulative offshore wind capacity - to 215 [gigawatts] or more by 2030 (BNEF 2020; 4C Offshore 2021). As part of that predicted surge, the U.S. offshore wind energy market continues to expand, primarily driven by increasing state-level procurement targets in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, an increased number of projects clearing major permitting milestones, as well as growing vessel, port, and infrastructure investments needed to keep pace with development."

"Solving climate change should taste at least as good as carrots, at best ice cream, but it should not be painful. . . . How do we ensure the lowest cost of energy while electrifying everything? First, policymakers have to rewrite the federal, state and local rules and regulations that were created for the fossil-fueled world and which prevent the US from having the cheapest electricity ever. Our country needs to massively scale up the industrial production of technological solutions, just as we did to win World War II. We cannot take our foot off the innovation gas - although I'll argue that we don't need any major breakthroughs, as thousands of little inventions and cost reductions are the key to achieving our end goal. Finally, we must have cheap financing for our transition to a zero-carbon energy system with low-interest "climate loans." Climate change will not be solved if only the richest 10% can afford it; we need mechanisms to bring everyone along for the ride."

"In 2006, I hosted a dinner after a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, former vice president Al Gore's seminal documentary on the climate crisis. We went around the table for everyone's reaction to the film's urgent message. When it came to my fifteen-year-old daughter, Mary, she declared with her typical candor: "I'm scared, and I'm angry." Then she added, "Dad, your generation created this problem. You better fix it." . . . As a venture capitalist, my job is to find big opportunities, target big challenges, and invest in big solutions. I was best known for backing companies like Google and Amazon early on. But the environmental crisis dwarfed any challenge I'd ever seen. . . . Eugene Kleiner, the late cofounder of Kleiner Perkins . . . left behind a set of twelve laws that [included the following:] There is a time when panic is the appropriate response. That time had come. . . . My partners and I made climate a top priority. We got serious about investing in clean and sustainable technologies . . . . Our climate investments were [slow] out of the gate, and many of them failed. . . . But with patience and persistence [by 2019] our surviving cleantech investments began to hit one home run after the next. [However, we currently] have no time for a victory lap. . . . Atmospheric carbon already exceeds the upper limit for climate stability. . . . The effects of runaway global warming are already plain to see: devastating hurricanes, biblical flooding, uncontrollable wildfires, killer heat waves, and extreme droughts. . . . I must warn you up front: we're not cutting emissions fast enough to outrun the damage on our doorstep. I said this in 2007, and I say it again today: what we're doing is not nearly enough. Unless we course correct with urgent speed and at a massive scale, we'll be staring at a doomsday scenario. The melting polar ice caps will drown coastal cities. Failed crops will lead to widespread famine. By midcentury, a billion souls worldwide could be climate refugees. . . . Fortunately, we have a powerful ally in this fight: innovation. Over the past fifteen years, prices for solar and wind power have plunged 90 percent. . . . Batteries are expanding the range of electrified vehicles at an ever lower cost. Greater energy efficiency has sharply reduced greenhouse gas emissions. . . . While a good many solutions are in hand, their deployment is nowhere near where it needs to be. We'll need massive investment and robust policy to make these innovations more affordable. We need to scale the ones we have - immediately - and invent the ones we still need. In short, we need both the now and the new."

"What do we need to build to fight global warming? . . . The answer is actually quite simple and requires no miracle technology: we must electrify everything, fast. That means not just the supply-side sources of energy; we’ve got to electrify everything on the demand-side - the things we use in our households and small businesses every day, including cars, furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and dryers. I’m optimistic because over the last two decades {we've made} advances and cost reductions in electric vehicles, solar cells, batteries, heat pumps, and induction cooking . . . . People who are relying on governments to solve this problem don’t understand the power they have in their own hands and homes to fight global warming. . . . One astounding thing happens when we electrify everything: we would need only one-half of the primary energy that currently powers the economy. . . . The electrification of things you do for climate is good for your health. The air in our homes will be cleaner, our cars zippier and community air quality better, our appliances faster and more high-tech, like smartphones compared to rotary phones. The electrified future can be awesome."

"When it comes to climate change, I know innovation isn’t the only thing we need. But we cannot keep the earth livable without it. Techno-fixes are not sufficient, but they are necessary."

"[W]e’re going to need much more clean electricity in the coming years. Most experts agree that as we electrify other carbon-intensive processes like making steel and running cars, the world’s electricity supply will need to double or even triple by 2050. And that doesn’t even account for population growth, or the fact that people will get richer and use more electricity. So the world will need much more than three times the electricity we generate now."

"Deploying today’s renewables and improving transmission couldn’t be more important. . . . Unless we use large amounts of nuclear energy . . . every path to zero {net emissions} in the United States will require us to install as much wind and solar power as we can build and find room for. It’s hard to say exactly how much of America’s electricity will come from renewables in the end, but what we do know is that between now and 2050 we have to build them much faster - on the order of 5 to 10 times faster - than we’re doing right now. And remember that most countries aren’t as lucky as the United States when it comes to solar and wind resources. The fact that we can hope to generate a large percentage of our power from renewables is the exception rather than the rule. That’s why, even as we deploy, deploy, deploy solar and wind, the world is going to need some new clean electricity inventions too."

"[I]t's . . . possible that some innovation will come along and make [other energy storage] ideas obsolete, the way the personal computer came along and more or less made the typewriter unnecessary. Cheap hydrogen could do that for storing electricity. . . . We could use electricity from a solar or wind farm to create hydrogen, store the hydrogen as a compressed gas or in another form, and then put it in a fuel cell to generate electricity on demand. [This] would solve the location problem; . . . although you can't ship sunlight in a railcar, you can turn it into fuel first and then ship it any way you like."

"Over the past decade, installed wind capacity has grown by an average of 20 percent a year, and wind turbines now provide about 5 percent of the world's electricity. Wind is growing for one simple reason: It's getting cheaper."

"[W]e [must] make this COP 26 in Glasgow the moment when we get real about climate change, and we can. We can get real on coal, cars, cash and trees. . . . But we cannot and will not succeed by government spending alone. . . . [T]he task now is to work together to help our friends to decarbonise using . . . the funds we have in development assistance and working with all the multilateral development banks so that in the key countries that need to make progress, we can jointly identify the projects that we can help to de-risk so that the private sector money can come in . . . . [Let us] in the next days devote ourselves to this extraordinary task. So that we not only continue with . . . a green industrial revolution, that is already creating millions of high wage, high skill jobs in power and technology, taking our economies forward. Let us also do enough to save our planet and our way of life."

"Climate change and biodiversity loss . . . pose an even greater existential threat [than the COVID-19 pandemic], to the extent that we have to put ourselves on what might be called a war-like footing. . . . Putting a value on carbon . . . [is] absolutely critical. . . . [W]e need a vast military style campaign to marshall the strength of the global private sector[, which has] trillions at its disposal . . . . [E]ach sector needs a clear strategy to speed up the process of getting innovations to market [and we] need to align private investment behind these industry strategies. . . . If we can develop a pipeline of many more sustainable and "bankable" projects, at a sufficient scale, it will attract greater investment. . . . CEOs and institutional investors have told me that alongside the promises countries have made, their nationally determined contributions, they need clear market signals, agreed globally, so that they have the confidence to invest without the goal posts suddenly moving. . . . [[w:Charles, Prince of Wales#Natural environment|[W]e are working]] to drive trillions of dollars in support of transition across ten of the most emitting and polluting industries [including] energy, agriculture, transportation, health systems and fashion. . . . I can only urge you, as the world’s decision-makers, to find practical ways of overcoming differences so we can all . . . rescue this precious planet and save the threatened future of our young people."

"Climate change is already . . . costing our nations trillions of dollars [and] we know that none of us can escape the worst that’s yet to come if we fail to seize this moment. . . . But . . . within the growing catastrophe, I believe there’s an incredible opportunity . . . . We have the ability to invest in ourselves and build an equitable clean-energy future and in the process create millions of good-paying jobs [while we] create an environment that raises the standard of living around the world. . . . When I talk to the American people about climate change, I tell them it’s about jobs. It’s about workers [and the] communities that will revitalize themselves around new industries and opportunities. . . . So, let’s get to work."

"We are aware that the industrialised countries have a particular responsibility. . . . The financing is essential if the industrialised countries are to maintain their credibility. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, with government activities alone we will not make progress. For this requires radical transformation of how we live, work and conduct business. I therefore want to take this opportunity to make a very clear appeal for pricing for CO2 emissions. With this form of pricing, which we already have in the European Union, which is to be introduced in China and which needs to be developed together with many others throughout the world, we could get our industries and businesses to find the technologically most effective and efficient ways to achieve climate neutrality. We need to work out how we can best integrate CO2-free mobility, CO2-free industry and CO2-free processes into our lives. My clear call in the Decade of Action, in the decade in which we now live, is for us to become more ambitious at a national level and at the same time to find global instruments that not only make use of taxpayers’ money but are also economically viable. And for me, the answer is CO2 pricing."

"In the midst of this global brainstorming on climate change, on behalf of India, I would like to present five [commitments] to deal with this challenge. First - India will take its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 gigawatts by 2030. Second - India will meet 50 percent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030. . . . And fifth - by the year 2070, India will achieve the target of Net Zero. . . . Today, when India has resolved to move forward with a new commitment and a new energy, the transfer of climate finance and low cost climate technologies have become more important. . . . India also understands the suffering of all other developing countries, shares them, and will continue to express their expectations."

"India is pioneering a new model of economic development that could avoid the carbon-intensive approaches that many countries have pursued in the past - and provide a blueprint for other developing economies. . . . {India's} economic growth has been among the highest in the world over the past two decades {as coal} and oil have so far served as bedrocks of India’s industrial growth and modernisation . . . . India’s annual CO2 emissions have risen to become the third highest in the world {but} India’s CO2 emissions per person put it near the bottom of the world’s emitters . . . India’s sheer size and its huge scope for growth means that its energy demand is set to grow by more than that of any other country in the coming decades. . . . {T}he good news is that the clean energy transition in India is already well underway. . . . Subsidies for petrol and diesel were removed in the early 2010s, and subsidies for electric vehicles were introduced in 2019. . . . {The country is} laying the groundwork to scale up important emerging technologies such as hydrogen, battery storage, and low-carbon steel, cement and fertilisers. . . . A transition to clean energy is a huge economic opportunity {but support} from the international community is essential to help shift India’s development onto a low-carbon path {and} access of low cost long term capital is key to achieve net zero. . . . India aims to become a global hub for green hydrogen production and exports. . . . As a large developing economy with over 1.3 billion people, India’s climate adaptation and mitigation ambitions are not just transformational for India but for the entire planet."

"[T]he solution has to be real economy government regulations to ban or to make higher [the] cost of the brown and polluting industries. That said, there are parts of finance which are longer-term and [evaluate] climate risks . . . and these are asset owners, the pension funds, the wealth funds and the insurance companies who are not so transactional [and] they’re not [as] interested in a deal to be done today. And they are in fact often mandated by their governments to take into account climate risk. So, I think those players will step up in this instance [turmoil in energy markets following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine] and [now who might be] investing for [an electricity generation project with a] 10-year horizon which you have to do with gas they will [say], "Let’s do it with renewables." And we’ve seen movements like that in the UK, where they’re pivoting towards onshore wind, which before the invasion was politically unviable because of the NIMBY factor. . . . [T]he pension funds and the actual asset owners . . . have a longer term of perspective. And they are actually driving the issue to their commercial managers who have to service them and they’re saying, "Look, we want you to act on climate change," and that's a huge driver."

"[A]s an atmospheric scientist and environmental engineer, I focus most on technologies — that’s what we think about most of what we need to be able to clean up electricity, what we need for cleaner cars. But those aren’t going to make it to market and those aren’t going to help cool the climate unless there are policies that get those to be deployed domestically. And what we do domestically isn’t enough because we’re only 1/7th of the world’s emissions, so we need diplomacy to take what we do here in the U.S. and make sure that that starts being applied in other parts of the world as well. . . . [A]s I was looking at the diplomacy [I noticed that what] the United States really gets right is being reciprocal . . . when we do something, we usually insist that our trading partners go along as well. You even hear in Congress talk about if we ever did have a carbon tax, being sure it got applied as tariffs on goods that got brought in."

"Solar has plunged by 90% in cost. Wind has plunged by 80% just in the past 11 or 12 years. . . . Things like wind and solar power really can already out-compete dirtier forms of electricity, and we just need to build more of them quickly; we’re not adding them fast enough. There are other technologies where we really need a big breakthrough. We don’t yet have affordable enough heat pumps. We don’t yet have a next generation nuclear technology that’s cheap enough, if we ever will. Geothermal is really at the cusp of becoming something that I think could really take off. What I also see, though, is that what carries those cutting-edge technologies to the cheaper cost can’t just happen in the lab. We need policies that pull those into the market, that get them adopted more — because if we can adopt them while they’re at that edge; while they’re not quite cheap enough, that can drive the economies of scale; that can drive what technologists call learning by doing."

"The ability to use renewables for the lion’s share of a grid’s supply, coupled with the fact that renewables have been made cheap and are getting yet cheaper, is the basis of a decarbonisation strategy all but universally accepted by those determined to stabilise the climate. Make the power on electric grids emissions-free, cheap and copious. Start electrifying all processes that now require fossil fuels - such as powering cars, or heating homes and steel foundries - where electrification is clearly possible. It does not deliver everything that is needed. But it delivers a lot."

"Even if you're a climate denier, you should be on board with what we're advocating. . . . Our central conclusion is that we should go full speed ahead with the green energy transition because it's going to save us money."

"[[w:Energy storage#Chemical|[Storing energy using] hydrogen]] . . . is getting a lot of play now. You could burn hydrogen in a gas turbine to produce electricity. You could use hydrogen in fuel cells that produce electricity without combustion; still a chemical reaction. Or you could simply use hydrogen to create ammonia, NH3, which is another liquid, as opposed to gaseous, chemical storage medium. . . . [E]xperts say that we could probably convert the grid 80% to renewable - that's wind and solar - without having to deal with [the] long-duration storage problem. We'd still use gas peaker plants for . . . 20% of the electricity that we need. If you want to do the other 20%, you're going to have to solve that problem of . . . long-term storage for the grid, days in a row. And you could do that with gravity storage. You could do that with a chemical energy carrier. It's done with methane now. So we've got to get rid of the methane. But you could have hydrogen or ammonia or another chemical energy medium which is yet to be discovered. That's the challenge. We can get to 80%, but we can't get to 100%."

"The global energy crisis is driving a sharp acceleration in installations of renewable power, with total capacity growth worldwide set to almost double in the next five years, overtaking coal as the largest source of electricity generation along the way and helping keep alive the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C . . . . Global renewable power capacity is now expected to grow by 2,400 gigawatts (GW) over the 2022-2027 period, an amount equal to the entire power capacity of China today, according to Renewables 2022, the latest edition of the IEA {International Energy Agency}’s annual report on the sector. . . . The amount of renewable power capacity added in Europe in the 2022-27 period is forecast to be twice as high as in the previous five-year period, driven by a combination of energy security concerns and climate ambitions. . . . Beyond Europe, the upward revision in renewable power growth for the next five years is also driven by China, the United States and India, which are all implementing policies and introducing regulatory and market reforms more quickly than previously planned to combat the energy crisis. . . . China is expected to account for almost half of new global renewable power capacity additions over the 2022-2027 period. Meanwhile, the US Inflation Reduction Act has provided new support and long-term visibility for the expansion of renewables in the United States. . . . Utility-scale solar PV [photovoltaics] and onshore wind are the cheapest options for new electricity generation in a significant majority of countries worldwide. Global solar PV capacity is set to almost triple over the 2022-2027 period, surpassing coal and becoming the largest source of power capacity in the world. The report also forecasts an acceleration of installations of solar panels on residential and commercial rooftops . . . . Global wind capacity almost doubles in the forecast period, with offshore projects accounting for one-fifth of the growth. Together, wind and solar will account for over 90% of the renewable power capacity that is added over the next five years. . . . While China remains the dominant player [in photovoltaic supply chains], its share in global manufacturing capacity could decrease from 90% today to 75% by 2027. . . . Total global biofuel demand is set to expand by 22% over the 2022-2027 period. . . . In advanced economies . . . faster growth [in renewable power capacity] would require various regulatory and permitting challenges to be tackled and a more rapid penetration of renewable electricity in the heating and transport sectors. In emerging and developing economies, [faster growth] would mean addressing policy and regulatory uncertainties, weak grid infrastructure and a lack of access to affordable financing that are hampering new projects. . . . Worldwide, the accelerated case requires efforts to resolve supply chain issues, expand grids and deploy more flexibility resources to securely manage larger shares of variable renewables. The accelerated case’s faster renewables growth would move the world closer to a pathway consistent with reaching net zero emissions by 2050, which offers an even chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C."

"We have taken the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world."

"Offshore wind turbines reach even higher and wider than land-based ones. Though twice as expensive as land-based wind, their costs are falling fast. That’s making offshore wind increasingly attractive in coastal regions of Europe and the northeastern United States, where population density is high, land is scarce, and winds over the ocean far outpace those over land."

"[W]e’ll never build enough batteries to back up the grid. Batteries are costly to build and costly to operate, since energy is dissipated each time they are charged and discharged. Transmission moves power more efficiently. Complementary resources smooth out supply. Demand flexibility narrows gaps and surpluses between supply and demand. The more robustly we deploy complementary resources, transmission, and flexibility, the less storage we will need to build and the less often we will have to deploy it, reducing the overall costs of electricity."

"[[w:Hydrogen economy|[H]ydrogen has many potential uses]], including electricity storage, trucking, chemical production, and industrial heat - which means options for producing and distributing hydrogen deserve a closer look. "Hydrogen is hard to make, hard to move, and hard to store, but once you’ve got it, it is a brilliant ingredient," [[w:Michael Webber|[Professor Michael] Webber]] told me."

"The [provisions of the proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, including] expansion of the wind and solar credits, the exciting expansion, or creation, of additional credits in green hydrogen, the inclusion of hydrogen cars in electric car credits, the extension of the electric car credits - all those things are good [but they're] not enough. The question now is, what do we do next?"

"The Inflation Reduction Act calls for spending less than $500 billion over a decade, compared with the American Rescue Plan’s $1.9 trillion in a single year . . . . But if the spending isn’t very large, how can it have such a big impact? The answer is that right now we’re sitting on a sort of cusp. Renewable energy technology has made revolutionary progress, and renewables are already cheaper in many areas than fossil fuels. A moderate push from public policy is all that it will take to transition to a much greener economy. And the Inflation Reduction Act will provide that push."

"[The Inflation Reduction Act] . . . doesn’t solve the climate challenge. This is the beginning . . . and the implementation is going to be everything. This is . . . like a starting gun for a race that's going to . . . hopefully define the coming decade of building something better."

"I’m about to sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law . . . . The [climate component of this legislation] invests $369 billion to take the most aggressive action ever . . . in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening . . . our energy security."

"{The US Inflation Reduction Act of 2022} is really good for a developing economy like Indonesia due to spillover effects because of lower costs {for technologies that help mitigate climate change}."

"[T]he analogy [regarding the three recent US climate laws] we’ve been thinking about is the backbone, the brain, and the lungs. So, the backbone being the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law {November 2021} . . . . That law [includes] investment in US infrastructure [such as] roads and bridges, but including significant energy infrastructure. Then there's the brain, the CHIPS and Science Act {August 2022}, and chips being the semiconductors that are in {electric vehicles, energy infrastructure, etc.} . . . and the science part authorizes additional investments from Congress in science {related to grid upgrades, zero emissions research, etc. by the} National Science Foundation and DOE {Department of Energy}. And then the third piece is the lungs. So, [taking a deep breath] breathing into that clean energy economy, the Inflation Reduction Act {August 2022} incentivizes deployment of clean technologies and really focuses on lowering costs for American families."

"Great, that is fantastic . . . . We want to be able to see energy - clean energy - produced in every pocket of the country. Blue states, red states, really it helps to save people money, so it’s all about green."

"[[w:Climate change policy of the United States#Federal policy|[I]f you think about how many times [US] politicians have tried and failed to pass climate legislation]], it's really notable that the Inflation Reduction Act went through. So in the past, basically legislators tried to have sticks: . . . there would be a cap and trade bill; people had debated a carbon tax. The Inflation Reduction Act includes no sticks, it's only carrots. . . . [T]his law is kind of a complicated way to try to go about decarbonizing America, but it proved to be the only politically viable option that American politicians had yet come up with. And so, I think, on those terms, it's absolutely a victory . . . for those who were trying to advance some kind of climate legislation through Washington."

"Climate security goes hand in hand with energy security. Putin’s abhorrent war in Ukraine and rising energy prices across the world are not a reason to go slow on climate change. They are a reason to act faster. Because diversifying our energy supplies by investing in renewables is precisely the way to insure ourselves against the risks of energy dependency. It is also a fantastic source of new jobs and growth."

"[COP27] ended on Sunday morning with researchers largely frustrated at the lack of any ambition to phase out fossil fuels. However, there was one silver lining: delegates from low and middle income countries (LMICs) came away with an agreement on a new 'loss and damage' fund to help them cover the costs of climate-change impacts. . . . Many blamed the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for a lack of progress on fossil fuels."

"[T]he change we need is to put innovation at the heart of everything we do. . . . [M]ajor challenges like energy security and net zero will be solved by innovation. The more we innovate, the more we grow."

"India has to do it for itself. . . . And India needs to do it for the world."

"Last year was a double milestone for decarbonizing the world’s energy system. It was the first year when investment in the energy transition equaled global investment in fossil fuels . . . . [And] 2022 was . . . the first year when investment in decarbonizing energy surpassed $1 trillion. The year-on-year increase of more than $250 billion from 2021 was the largest jump yet."

"[T]he process for the permitting of renewable energy generation and electric transmission projects in the United States is multi-layered and often extremely long. If the U.S. is to achieve its climate ambitions and fully implement transformative legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress will also have to enable a massively accelerated build-out of clean energy infrastructure. At the same time, valuable environmental safeguards, and the established public participatory and related administrative processes used to adopt and implement them, cannot simply be sidestepped. Congress should approach federal permitting reform in a way that maximizes efficiency in government decisionmaking through shorter timelines for regulatory approvals without sacrificing the value of the current process in protecting the environment and local stakeholders. Further, it is essential that reforms are evidence-based in targeting the major sources of current delays."

"Because Australia has {aggressively incentivized adoption of} rooftop solar, the economics are extraordinary. . . . So if we use our cheap sunshine to drive our cars and heat our homes, we're going to save money sooner."

"In the last several months all the key associations looked across the table and realised we were arguing for the same thing. . . . This is Big Wind and Big Solar coming to the table and saying we want to get things done. . . . It will not be possible to achieve anything close to a climate solution with the current {permitting} system in place."

"{H}ydrogen is seen as a way to substitute large amounts of energy that we’re buying now at extremely high costs from countries that we shouldn’t buy this from."

"And it's just the beginning. You know, we also protected the most significant breakthrough ever—ever—in dealing with the existential threat of climate change. Today, new wind and solar power is cheaper than fossil fuel. Since I've been in office, clean energy and advanced manufacturing have brought in $470 billion in private investments. That's going to create thousands of jobs—good-paying jobs—all across this country and help the environment at the same time. And remember, at the beginning of this debate, some of my Republican colleagues were determined to gut the clean energy investments. And I said no, and we kept them all."

"We have a tremendous sense of pride in our history . . . But we also understand that energy is energy, whether it is generated by wind, steam or whatever it might be."

"Solar energy is the most widely available energy resource on Earth, and its economic attractiveness is improving fast in a cycle of increasing investments. . . . [D]ue to technological trajectories set in motion by past policy, a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies. Uncertainties arise, however, over grid stability in a renewables-dominated power system, the availability of sufficient finance in underdeveloped economies, the capacity of supply chains and political resistance from regions that lose employment."

"{T}he challenges are great but we have the conviction that by working together - the {European} Commission, the ITER Organization and F4E {Fusion for Energy} - we can overcome them and slowly but steadily bring the ITER project back on its rails."

"Electricity generation. We expect that the 23 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 and 37 GW in 2024 of new solar capacity scheduled to come online will help U.S. solar generation grow by 15% in 2023 and by 39% in 2024. We expect solar and wind generation together in 2024 to overtake electric power generation from coal for the first year ever, exceeding coal by nearly 90 billion kilowatthours."

"We're not interested in a pilot [climate project] just for experimentation. . . . We're interested in proving that they work and that then we can scale them. . . . Utilities [can't afford to] move fast and break things [but they] can be great mechanisms for scaling up innovation."

"I think [it’s] to be determined {whether the post-pandemic, low-interest-rate-fueled investment spike which flowed to non-governmental fusion companies will actually result in commercially viable fusion power}. . . . When interest rates were low, people were willing to make long-term bets. [However, the] level of investment was substantial, and it should yield technological progress."

"If the world is to decarbonise, then more clean energy is needed, fast. [To meet current UNFCCC pledges, countries must] raise global renewable-energy capacity to 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030. [However, supply chain problems and rising interest rates cloud the industry's future. Another obstacle is slow permitting] approval, which delays projects for years and can needlessly tie up capital, lowering returns. [And,] too little development is happening in the global south [because investors require a premium when venturing money in emerging markets]. A last obstacle is protectionism, which raises costs and threatens shortages. . . . Rather than micromanaging production, governments should unleash investment, by acting boldly to strip back permitting rules and ease the risk of projects in the global south [which can come from blending in government money in southern projects that assumes some risk]. They also need to face up to the fact that protectionism frustrates their climate goals. It leads to lower returns, higher prices for power and more broken promises over decarbonisation."

"[D]ata from the World Meteorological Agency show that, as the U.N. Secretary-General, António Guterres, told the {COP28} global climate talks in Dubai last week, we can safely say, even with weeks to go, that 2023 will take the title {as the world's hottest year on record}. . . . And yet . . . [a]lmost simultaneous with the breakout in temperature, there was a breakout in the installation of renewable energy, especially solar power, around the world. . . . {T}he cost of clean energy has dropped so far that it is now possible that saving the planet might be a corollary of saving cash. This ongoing drop in price is more than a decade old, but sometime in the past few years it crossed an invisible line, making it cheaper than hydrocarbons, and this was the year when that reality finally translated into dramatic action on the ground. . . . There are plenty of other technologies we’re [currently] spending money on, including small nuclear reactors and giant carbon-sucking machines, that may or may not someday play a role in the climate fight, but, for all the furor they produce, they seem unlikely to make much difference anytime soon. In the next few years, while the planet’s climate system teeters on the edge of breaking, it’s sun, wind, and batteries that matter. They’re cheap, and they’re ready."

"{In 2023 it was the clean economy expansion efforts of} China that blew everyone away. In what may be the single biggest sustainability headline of the year, China’s national oil company, Sinopec, said the country had reached peak gasoline demand (in part by radically increasing sales of EVs). Some analysts believe China may have peaked in total carbon emissions already. The country was on track to add 150 gigawatts of solar this year (versus adding 87 gigawatts in 2022), more than the total capacity in the U.S. And in a rare positive moment in U.S.-China relations, the countries agreed to ramp up renewables. If all the estimates are true, it’s a monumental and fundamental shift in global energy and transportation systems . . . . On the other hand . . . As critics point out, China is permitting more coal plants, but this can get misconstrued. (People say to me that China is building two plants per week when, in reality, many don’t get built.) The new plants are much cleaner, it’s generally backup power, and China is also cancelling and shelving plants rapidly as well."

"It is often heard . . . that efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing the use of fossil fuels and developing cleaner energy sources will lead to a reduction in the number of jobs. What is happening is that millions of people are losing their jobs due to different effects of climate change: rising sea levels, droughts and other phenomena affecting the planet have left many people adrift. Conversely, the transition to renewable forms of energy, properly managed, as well as efforts to adapt to the damage caused by climate change, are capable of generating countless jobs in different sectors. This demands that politicians and business leaders should even now be concerning themselves with it."

"We are edging ever-closer to a fusion-powered reality. And at the same time, yes, significant scientific and engineering challenges exist. . . . Careful thought and thoughtful policy is going to be critical to navigate this."

"{UNFCCC participant countries should transition} away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science[; they should also accelerate] efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power[; and triple] renewable energy capacity globally."

"{UNFCCC participant countries should accelerate} zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage."

"No, the Cop28 agreement will not enable the world to hold the 1.5C limit, but yes, the result is a pivotal landmark. This agreement delivers on making it clear to all financial institutions, businesses and societies that we are now finally – eight years behind the Paris schedule – at the true "beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel-driven world economy."

"Tripling {global renewable energy capacity} is a monumental change. . . . We don't have any structures that fit 100% with the new system that is coming."

"This is not a transition that will happen from one day to the other . . . . Whole economies and societies are dependent on fossil fuels. Fossil capital will not disappear just because we made a decision here. [But the COP28 final agreement sends] a strong political message that this is the pathway."

"China's status as the colossus of renewable energy is set to be cemented in the next five years, with the world's second-biggest economy adding more capacity than the rest of globe combined. The International Energy Agency said in its Renewables 2023 report . . . that China will account for 56% of renewable energy capacity additions in the 2023-28 period. . . . There is also a caveat to China's rapid build-out of renewable capacity because at the same time it is still adding substantial coal-fired generation. China is the world's biggest coal producer and importer and has more coal-fired capacity under construction than the rest of the world combined. China is building 136.24 GW of coal-fired generation, and has another 255.5 GW at the announced, pre-permit or permitted stage, according to data compiled by the Global Energy Monitor. . . . It's clear that renewables are increasing their share of China's power generation, but it's equally clear coal-fired power is going to be around for decades to come, and that if China does meet its goal of net-zero emissions by 2060, it will largely be achieved in the final years prior to the deadline."

"A virtual power plant is a system of distributed energy resources - like rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, and smart water heaters - that work together to balance energy supply and demand on a large scale. They are usually run by local utility companies who oversee this balancing act. . . . VPPs can . . . allow grid operators to control the demand from end users. For example, smart thermostats linked to air conditioning units can [stagger] cooling times [to] help prevent abrupt demand hikes that might overwhelm the grid and cause outages. Similarly, electric vehicle chargers can adapt to the grid’s requirements by either supplying or utilizing electricity. These distributed energy sources connect to the grid through communication technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular services."

"[Batteries are] able to very effectively manage that evening ramp where solar is going down and customer demand is increasing. [Batteries also] made some differences last summer. We were able to meet high load days and wildfire days when we might lose some power lines."

"We have to be able to integrate all {the new} low-cost, renewable energy {flowing into the North American electrical grid} fast . . . . {With reconductoring, you’re} not acquiring a new right of way; you’re not building new towers. So it can be done much faster. . . . In the longer run, newer lines will play an important role{, but reconductoring is an inexpensive, quick way of keeping up with the increasing stresses placed on the electrical grid by changes in both supply and demand.}"

"Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. . . . The benefits [of cheaper energy] start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less - and that includes pretty much everything. . . . Cheap energy can purify water, and even desalinate it. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers . . . . But [the] most consequential [result will be that] cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting [the] wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities."

"Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. Some afternoons, solar panels alone have produced more power than the state uses. And, at night, large utility-scale batteries that have been installed during the past few years are often the single largest source of supply to the grid—sending the excess power stored up during the afternoon back out to consumers across the state. It’s taken years of construction—and solid political leadership in Sacramento—to slowly build this wave, but all of a sudden it’s cresting into view. California has the fifth-largest economy in the world and, in the course of a few months, the state has proved that it’s possible to run a thriving modern economy on clean energy."

"Our nation has eight million jobs in clean energy! Can we double it, guys, before the sea levels rise And I'm roommates with a manatee?"

"As summer heat strikes, the US grid increasingly relies on a kind of invisible weapon - the "virtual power plant" - to prevent blackouts. . . . Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie says the VPPs already deployed or under development in the US will be able to save as much juice as 33 nuclear reactors can produce. . . . The US Energy Department estimates that peak consumption will increase by as much as 200 gigawatts through 2030, and about 80% of that boost could be met through VPPs."

"The International Energy Agency (IEA) . . . reckons that the global installed capacity of battery storage will need to rise from less than 200 gigawatts (GW) last year to more than a terawatt (TW) by the end of the decade, and nearly 5TW by 2050 . . . . Fortunately, though, the business of storing energy on the grid is at last being turbocharged. . . . A plunge in the price of lithium batteries is fuelling their adoption on the grid. . . . Sodium-ion batteries are one promising alternative {and incumbents} are rushing to develop the technology for the grid."

"At this point the {Texas} legislature can’t do anything to stop the growth of solar and wind and batteries . . . . The state desperately needs it."

"With global electricity demand set to grow strongly, new technologies {like enhanced geothermal systems and closed-loop geothermal systems} are opening up the massive potential of geothermal energy to provide around-the-clock clean power in almost all countries around the world, according to a new IEA report. The report, The Future of Geothermal Energy, finds that geothermal energy could meet 15% of global electricity demand growth between now and 2050 if project costs continue to decline. This would mean . . . delivering annual output equivalent to the current electricity demand of the United States and India combined. . . . Importantly, geothermal energy can draw upon the expertise of today’s oil and gas industries by using existing drilling techniques and equipment to go deeper under the earth’s surface . . . . Conventional geothermal remains a location-specific, niche technology today with most of the installed capacity in countries that have either volcanic activity or straddle tectonic fault lines . . . . But new technologies are . . . opening up the potential to benefit from it in nearly all countries. . . . [T]he report finds that costs could fall by 80% by 2035 to around $50 per megawatt hour (MWh). This would make geothermal the cheapest source of dispatchable low-emissions electricity on a par with existing hydropower and nuclear installations. . . . If next-generation geothermal grows strongly in the coming years, employment in the overall geothermal sector could increase sixfold to 1 million jobs by 2030 . . . . Up to 80% of the investment required in geothermal involves capacity and skills that are transferrable from existing oil and gas operations. The oil and gas industry can also benefit {because next-generation geothermal can} serve as a hedge against commercial risks related to projected future declines in oil and gas demand. At a time when the digital economy and artificial intelligence applications are growing strongly {and with} next-generation geothermal offering a stable and essentially inexhaustible power source, large technology companies are already signing power purchase agreements with new projects."

"[1] 2023 saw a step change in renewable capacity additions, driven by China’s solar PV market. Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. . . . [2] Achieving the COP28 target of tripling global renewable capacity by 2030 hinges on policy implementation. . . . [C]hallenges [that could prevent reaching the tripling goal] fall into four main categories and differ by country: 1) policy uncertainties and delayed policy responses to the new macroeconomic environment; 2) insufficient investment in grid infrastructure preventing faster expansion of renewables; 3) cumbersome administrative barriers and permitting procedures and social acceptance issues; 4) insufficient financing in emerging and developing economies. . . . [3] The global power mix will be transformed by 2028. . . . In 2028, renewable energy sources [are expected to] account for over 42% of global electricity generation, with the share of wind and solar PV doubling to 25%. . . . [4] China is the world’s renewables powerhouse. . . . China’s role is critical in reaching the global goal of tripling renewables because the country is expected to install more than half of the new capacity required globally by 2030. . . . [5] The US, the EU, India and Brazil remain bright spots for onshore wind and solar PV growth. . . . Supportive policy environments and the improving economic attractiveness of solar PV and onshore wind are the primary drivers behind this acceleration. . . . [6] Solar PV prices plummet amid growing supply glut. . . . Despite unprecedented PV manufacturing expansion in the United States and India driven by policy support, China is expected to maintain its 80‑95% share of global supply chains . . . . [7] Onshore wind and solar PV are cheaper than both new and existing fossil fuel plants. . . . Despite the increasing contribution needs for flexibility and reliability to integrate variable renewables, the overall competitiveness of onshore wind and solar PV changes only slightly by 2028 in Europe, China, India and the United States. . . . [8] The new macroeconomic environment presents further challenges that policy makers need to address. . . . Since 2022, central bank base interest rates have increased from below 1% to almost 5%. . . . The implications . . . are manifold . . . . [I]nflation has increased equipment costs . . . [H]igher interest rates are increasing the financing costs of capital-intensive variable renewable technologies. . . . [And] policy has been relatively slow to adjust to the new macroeconomic environment due in part to expectations that cost reductions would continue . . . . [9] The forecast for wind capacity additions is less optimistic outside China, especially for offshore. . . .The wind industry, especially in Europe and North America, is facing challenges due to a combination of ongoing supply chain disruptions, higher costs and long permitting timelines. . . . [10] Faster deployment of variable renewables increases integration and infrastructure challenges. . . . Although European Union interconnections help integrate solar PV and wind generation, grid bottlenecks will pose significant challenges and lead to increased curtailment in many countries as grid expansion cannot keep pace with accelerated installation of variable renewables. . . . [11] Current hydrogen plans and implementation don’t match. . . . We have revised down our forecasts for all regions except China. The main reason is the slow pace of bringing planned projects to final investment decisions due to a lack of off‑takers and the impact of higher prices on production costs. . . . [12] Biofuel deployment is accelerating and diversifying more into renewable diesel and biojet fuel. . . . Emerging economies, led by Brazil, dominate global biofuel expansion . . . . Biofuels remain the dominant pathway for avoiding oil demand in the diesel and jet fuel segments. EVs outpace biofuels in the gasoline segment, especially in the United States, Europe and China. . . . [13] Aligning biofuels with a net zero pathway requires a huge increase in the pace of deployment. . . . Much faster biofuel deployment is possible through new policies and addressing supply chain challenges. [14] Renewable heat accelerates amid high energy prices and policy momentum – but not enough to curb emissions. . . . [The renewable heat acceleration comes] predominantly from the growing reliance on electricity for process heat – notably with the adoption of heat pumps in non‑energy‑intensive industries – and the deployment of electric heat pumps and boilers in buildings, increasingly powered by renewable electricity."

"The world’s demand for electricity is rising at its fastest rate in years, driven by robust economic growth, intense heatwaves and increasing uptake of technologies that run on electricity such as EVs and heat pumps, according to a new report by the IEA. At the same time, renewables continue their rapid ascent, with solar PV on course to set new records. . . . Global electricity demand is forecast to grow by around 4% in 2024 and {will do so} into 2025, with growth around 4% again . . . . {The} share of global electricity supply {generated by renewables is} forecast to rise from 30% in 2023 to 35% in 2025. The amount of electricity generated by renewables worldwide in 2025 is forecast to eclipse the amount generated by coal for the first time. Solar PV alone is expected to meet roughly half of the growth in global electricity demand over 2024 and 2025 - with solar and wind combined meeting as much as three-quarters of the growth. Despite the sharp increases in renewables, global power generation from coal is unlikely to decline this year due to the strong growth in demand, especially in China and India . . . As a result, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the global power sector are plateauing, with a slight increase in 2024 followed by a decline in 2025. …Some of the world’s major economies are registering particularly strong increases in electricity consumption. Demand in India is expected to surge by a massive 8% this year . . . . China is also set to see significant demand growth of more than 6% . . . . After declining in 2023 amid mild weather, electricity demand in the United States is forecast to rebound this year by 3% . . . . By contrast, the European Union will see . . . growth forecast at 1.7% . . . . In many parts of the world, increasing use of air-conditioning will remain a significant driver of electricity demand. Multiple regions faced intense heatwaves . . . . With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the electricity demand of data centres is drawing increased attention . . . ."

"{COP29 set} a new annual target for global climate finance {by} reaching a deal for $300 billion a year by 2035. {However,} many developing countries said {this} amount was far too low. They also warned that the deadline for a decade away in 2035 would hold back the world's transition to clean energy. . . . Though he has yet to take office, climate denier Donald Trump's . . . election meant the U.S. could offer little at {the conference. . . . Also, the parties} reached a deal to allow countries to begin establishing {carbon} credits to bring in funding and offset their emissions, or to trade them on a market exchange."

"The current level of climate finance ambition has broadly been preserved. There is no regression, which was a real risk given the current context. . . . While some have argued that no agreement would have been better than a bad one, I fail to see how waiting until next year — or even the year after — would have led to a more favorable outcome."

"This method, seemingly very clever, actually played into our hands! And so it often happens that an apparently ingenious idea is in fact a weakness which the scientific cryptographer seizes on for his solution."

"Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break."

"The multiple human needs and desires that demand privacy among two or more people in the midst of social life must inevitably lead to cryptology wherever men thrive and wherever they write."

"The magic words are squeamish ossifrage"

"Feistel and Coppersmith rule. Sixteen rounds and one hell of an avalanche."

"For the computer security community, the moral is obvious: if you are designing a system whose functions include providing evidence, it had better be able to withstand hostile review."

"When a cryptanalyst starts out trying to analyze a new algorithm, his first thought is probably: "Yikes. What a mess. I'll never make sense of this". So there are all sorts of tricks to help you start to probe into the convoluted innards of the cipher. One of these is to attack a weakened version. Later, he may be able to extend the attack to the full strength version; or, if this cannot be done, the reason why it can't at least gives some insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the cipher."

"There is also a side benefit: the difference in strength made by even really subtle changes warns us just how tricky crypto can be..."

"Due to the suspicious nature of crypto users I have a feeling DES will be with us forever, we will just keep adding keys and cycles..."

"The NSA response was, "Well, that was interesting, but there aren't any ciphers like that.""

"The real work in an attack, at least an attack against a well-designed cipher, is modifying the attack technique so that it works. Knudsen's papers are an excellent example of this; he is a master at making an attack work where others have failed. Differentials work where characteristics don't. Truncated differentials work where normal differentials don't. Even this year's exciting find, impossible differentials, are simply another way at looking at a differential attack. A cryptanalyst with a "menu" would have never found any of those attacks, and would have broken far fewer ciphers."

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."

"The point of academic attacks is not exhibiting practical breaks; the point is that only a trained cryptographer can tell whether a given algorithm is secure or not. The author of an algorithm says: "My cipher is secure, and trust me, I am an expert at this. And to prove that I am a real good expert, I challenge other experts to find even the most impractical, academic flaw in my cipher"."

"Just like glue. Commercial ads state that the foobar glue can stick an elephant to the ceiling. Who needs to stick an elephant to the ceiling? But if it can do that, people will trust its sticking strength."

"We didn't do this with just a pencil and some paper. Lots of our notes are in pen. We didn't need to erase much."

"If you think cryptography is the answer to your problem, then you don't know what your problem is."

"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

"Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is."

"Spick and span new."

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

"Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things). People vary in terms of which motive is stronger […]: Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as "openness to experience"), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what's tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions."

"There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better.""

"Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance that has grown stale, which men of old have spoken."

"Afrique est coustumiere toujours choses produire nouvelles et monstrueuses."

"The sort of thing that pleased the public mind was caricatures of eminent politicians after a course of Boom-feeding, uses of the idea on hoardings, and such edifying exhibitions as the dead wasps that had escaped the fire and the remaining hens. Beyond that the public did not care to look, until very strenuous efforts were made to turn its eyes to the remoter consequences, and even then for a while its enthusiasm for action was partial. "There's always somethin' New," said the public--a public so glutted with novelty that it would hear of the earth being split as one splits an apple without surprise, and, "I wonder what they'll do next.""

"There is nothing new except what is forgotten."

"Wie machen wir's, dass alles frisch und neu Und mit Bedeutung auch gefällig sei?"

"Dulcique animos novitate tenebo."

"Est natura hominum novitatis avida."

"Ex Africa semper aliquid novi."

"Sehen Sie, die beste Neuigkeit verliert, sobald sie Stadtmärchen wird."

"What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable."

"Whose noble praise Deserves a quill pluckt from an angel's wing."

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword."

"Take away the sword; States can be saved without it; bring the pen!"

"Hinc quam sit calamus sævior euse, patet."

"Oh! nature's noblest gift—my gray-goose quill! Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from thy parent-bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men!"

"The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly sing Made of a quill from an angel's wing."

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

"While the language of the lips is fleeting as the breath itself, and confined to a single spot as well as to a single moment, the language of the pen enjoys, in many instances, an adamantine existence, and will only perish amid the ruins of the globe. Before its mighty touch time and space become annihilated; it joins epoch to epoch, and pole to pole.[…] But for this, everything would be doubt, and darkness, and death-shade; all knowledge would be traditionary and all experience local; civilized life would relapse into barbarism, and man would have to run through his little, and comparatively insignificant round of existence, the perpetual sport of ignorance and error, uninstructed by science, unregulated by laws, and unconsoled by Revelation."

"When a filled pen is held point downwards, the ink it contains is acted on by a variety of forces, among which may be reckoned gravity, inertia, capillary attraction, air pressure, friction, and the viscosity of the liquid, as well as several minor forces. If the pen is properly made, these forces are in a state of equilibrium, and the ink does not run out of the reservoir. As soon, however, as the point touches a surface it is capable of wetting, the action of the capillary attraction is altered, with the result that the ink is enabled to flow from the reservoir, and that the pen writes."

"The swifter hand doth the swift words outrun: Before the tongue hath spoke the hand hath done."

"Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre."

"Tant la plume a eu sous le roi d'avantage sur l'épée."

"Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter."

"To hold a pen is to be at war"

"Art thou a pen, whose task shall be To drown in ink What writers think? Oh, wisely write, That pages white Be not the worse for ink and thee."

"For what made that in glory shine so long But poets' Pens, pluckt from Archangels' wings?"

"Anser, apie, vitellus, populus et regna gubernant."

"The pen became a clarion."

"The sacred Dove a quill did lend From her high-soaring wing."

"Non sest aliena res, quæ fere ab honestis negligi solet, cura bene ac velociter scribendi."

"You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing's curst hard reading."

"The feather, whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an Angel's wing."

"And fire a mine in China, here With sympathetic gunpowder."

"Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound."

"Controlling fires is an enormously difficult challenge. Our research has shown that by applying large electric fields we can suppress flames very rapidly. We're very excited about the results of this relatively unexplored area of research."

"We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."

"In 1881, Edison built electricity generating stations at Pearl Street in Manhattan and Holborn in London. Within a year, he was selling electricity as a commodity. A year later, the first electric motors were driving manufacturing machinery. Yet by 1900, less than 5% of mechanical drive power in American factories was coming from electric motors. The age of steam lingered."

"Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence: or shall we say it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we dreamed it."

"Without electricity, there can be no art."

"Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole."

"I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes."

"Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say "It lightens.""

"At the beginning of the Great Depression, the vast majority of rural communities across the United States had little or no access to electricity. The cost of connecting to private electric lines was so prohibitive that many rural communities turned to organizing amongst themselves to find creative solutions to electrification. In 1935, the federal government established the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to support the formation of rural electric cooperatives. Over the following decades, this initiative thoroughly transformed rural life, extending electricity to rural businesses, farms, schools, and households and establishing a large network of utilities cooperatives that continue to provide services to rural areas today."

"One can prophesy with a Daniel's confidence that skilled electricians will settle the battles of the near future. But this is the least. In its effect upon war and peace, electricity offers still much greater and more wonderful possibilities. To stop war by the perfection of engines of destruction alone, might consume centuries and centuries. Other means must be employed to hasten the end."

"Electric current, after passing into the earth travels to the diametrically opposite region of the same and rebounding from there, returns to its point of departure with virtually undiminished force. The outgoing and returning currents clash and form nodes and loops similar to those observable on a vibrating cord. To traverse the entire distance of about twenty-five thousand miles, equal to the circumference of the globe, the current requires a certain time interval, which I have approximately ascertained. In yielding this knowledge, nature has revealed one of its most precious secrets, of inestimable consequence to man. So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself, had electrically designed this planet just for the purpose of enabling us to achieve wonders which, before my discovery, could not have been conceived by the wildest imagination."

"Go hug your girlfriend! Or if you don't have any, go find one! You won't find the meaning of life with electricity!"

"Stretches, for leagues and leagues, the Wire, A hidden path for a Child of Fire— Over its silent spaces sent, Swifter than Ariel ever went, From continent to continent."

"While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven, Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven."

"And stoic Franklin's energetic shade Robed in the lightnings which his hand allay'd."

"To put a girdle round about the world."

"A vast engine of wonderful delicacy and intricacy, a machine that is like the tools of the Titans put in your hands. This machinery, in its external fabric so massive and so exquisitely adjusted, and in its internal fabric making new categories of thought, new ways of thinking about life."

"Notwithstanding my experiments with electricity the thunderbolt continues to fall under our noses and beards; and as for the tyrant, there are a million of us still engaged at snatching away his sceptre."

"But matchless Franklin! What a few Can hope to rival such as you. Who seized from kings their sceptred pride And turned the lightning's darts aside."

"A million hearts here wait our call, All naked to our distant speech— I wish that I could ring them all And have some welcome news for each."

"An ideal's love-fraught, imperious call That bids the spheres become articulate."

"This is a marvel of the universe: To fling a thought across a stretch of sky— Some weighty message, or a yearning cry, It matters not; the elements rehearse Man's urgent utterance, and his words traverse The spacious heav'ns like homing birds that fly Unswervingly, until, upreached on high, A quickened hand plucks off the message terse."

"Eripuit cælo fulmen, mox sceptra tyrannis."

"Russia is the largest energy power. The country with a unique energy system, one of the leaders in generating electricity and supplying it to the global market. This is the result of your hard work and professionalism. Each of you (energy complex's worker and veteran) does everything to ensure that the country's energy system stays reliable."

"Col. Olcott, was taken to task for asserting in one of his lectures that Electricity is matter. Such, nevertheless, is the teaching of the Occult Doctrine. "Force," "Energy," may be better names for it, so long as European Science knows so little about its true nature; yet matter it is, as much as Ether is matter, since it is as atomic, though indeed several removes from Ether. p. 136"

"It seems ridiculous to argue that because a thing is imponderable to Science, therefore it cannot be called matter. Electricity is "immaterial," in the sense that its molecules are not subject to perception and experiment; yet it may be — and Occultism says it is — atomic; therefore it is matter. But even supposing it were unscientific to speak of it in such terms, once Electricity is called in Science a source of Energy, Energy simply, and a Force — where is that Force or that Energy which can be thought of without thinking of matter? p. 137"

"Electricity is not only Substance, but that it is an emanation from an Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but one of the numberless Entities that rule and guide our world, according to the eternal Iaw of Karma. p. 137"

"The Aurora Borealis and Australis (Aurora)... take place at the very centres of terrestrial electric and magnetic forces. The two Poles are said to be the store-houses, the receptacles and liberators, at the same time, of cosmic and terrestrial Vitality (Electricity), from the surplus of which the Earth, had it not been for these two natural safety-valves, would have been rent to pieces long ago. p. 226"

"If, as Sir William Grove says, the electricity we handle is but the result of ordinary matter affected by something invisible, the intimate generating power" of every Force, the "one omnipresent influence," then it only becomes natural that one should believe as the Ancients did; namely, that every Element is dual in its nature. p.508"

"Sir William Grove... in a lecture at the London Institution, in 1842, was the first to show that "heat, light, may be considered as affections of matter itself, and not of a distinct ethereal, 'imponderable,' fluid [a state of matter now] permeating it." Yet, perhaps, for some Physicists... Force and Forces were tacitly "Spirit [and hence Spirits] in Nature." What several rather mystical Scientists taught was that light, heat, magnetism, electricity and gravity, etc., were not the final Causes of the visible phenomena, including planetary motion, but were themselves the secondary effects of other Causes, for which Science in our day cares very little, but in which Occultism believes; for the Occultists have exhibited proofs of the validity of their claims in every age. And in what age were there no Occultists and no Adepts? p. 525"

"The science of electricity, which was not yet in existence when he [Boehme] wrote, is there anticipated [in his writings]; and not only does Boehme describe all the now known phenomena of that force, but he even gives us the origin, generation, and birth of electricity, itself. p. 535"

"We have an important scientific corroboration for one of our fundamental dogmas — namely, that (a) the Sun is the store-house of Vital Force, which is the Noumenon of Electricity; and {b) that it is from its mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed depths, that issue those lifecurrents which thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every living thing on Earth. p. 579"

"The Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir John Herschell for "solar inhabitants," are the reservoirs of solar vital energy; "the vital electricity that feeds the whole system; the sun in abscondito ;being thus the storehouse of our little Cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out," and the visible Sun only a window cut into the real solar palace and presence, which, however, shews without distortion the interior work. p. 592"

"We are told that Mr. Keely defines electricity "as a certain form of atomic vibration." In this he is quite right; but this is Electricity on the terrestrial plane, and through terrestrial correlations. p. 613"

"Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life, says the Evangelist [and the Kabalist]. Both are electricity — the life principle, the Anima Mundi — pervading the Universe, the electric vivifier of all things. p. 633"

"The inventor...looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization."

"A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind."

"INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization."

"Originality is going back to the origin and finding an empty chair. Would you gladly sit on it? No thank you. It is empty for a reason. That’s where my ass was. Not where my head is now."

"Se non è vero è ben trovato."

"Someone told me that creativity is just learning to do something with a different perspective."

"Want, the mistress of invention."

"I don't think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble."

"The invention of inventing, it turns out, produces yet more inventions."

"Invention is both the institution of problem solving and advancing human obsolescence. We were naturally selected to replace ourselves."

"All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product."

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

"Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also."

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

"God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

"Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor."

"Although it is not, abstractedly speaking, of importance to know who first made a most valuable experiment, or to what individual the community is indebted for the invention of the most useful machine, yet the sense of mankind has in this, as in several other things, been in direct opposition to frigid reasoning; and we are pleased with a recollection of benefits, and with rendering honour to the memory of those who bestowed them. Were public benefactors to be allowed to pass away like hewers of wood and drawers of water, without commemoration, genius and enterprise would be deprived of their most coveted distinction, and after-times would lose incentives to that emulation which urges us to cherish and practise what has been worthy of commendation or imitation in our forefathers; and to make their works, which may have served for a light and been useful to the age in which they lived, a guide and a spur to ourselves"

"A scientist, an artist, a citizen is not like a child who needs papa methodology and mama rationality to give him security and direction, he can take care of himself, for he is the inventor not only of laws, theories, pictures, plays, forms of music, ways of dealing with his fellow man, institutions, but also entire world view, he is the inventor of entire forms of like."

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."

"Take the advice of a faithful friend, and submit thy inventions to his censure."

"Technologies needed [to help avoid a climate disaster]: Hydrogen produced without emitting carbon, Grid-scale electricity storage that can last a full season, Electrofuels, Advanced biofuels, Zero-carbon cement, Zero-carbon steel, Plant- and cell-based meat and dairy, Zero-carbon fertilizer, Next-generation nuclear fission, Nuclear fusion, Carbon capture (both direct air capture and point capture), Underground electricity transmission, Zero-carbon plastics, Geothermal energy, Pumped hydro, Thermal storage, Drought- and flood-tolerant food crops, Zero-carbon alternatives to palm oil, [and] Coolants that don’t contain F-gases."

"For many things we can find substitutes, but there is not now, nor will there ever be, a substitute for creative thought."

"The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves—the creature of habits and infirmities."

"There is an unlucky tendency to allow every new invention to add to life's complications, and every new power to increase life’s hustling; so that, unless we can dominate the mischief, we are really the worse off instead of the better."

"Electric telegraphs, printing, gas, Tobacco, balloons, and steam, Are little events that have come to pass Since the days of the old régime. And, spite of Lemprière's dazzling page, I'd give—though it might seem bold— A hundred years of the Golden Age For a year of the Age of Gold."

"Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the form ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it."

"Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem."

"Imagination is the outreaching of mind... the bombardment of the conscious mind with ideas, impulses, images and every sort of psychic phenomena welling up from the preconscious. It is the capacity to "dream dreams and see visions...""

"The human imagination leaps to form the whole, to complete the scene in order to make sense of it. The instantaneous way this is done shows how we are driven to construct the remainder of the scene. To fill the gaps is essential if the scene is to have meaning. That we may do this in misleading ways — at times in neurotic or paranoid ways — does not gainsay the central point. Our passion for form expresses our yearning to make the world adequate to our needs and desires, and, more important, to experience ourselves as having significance."

"Creativity perpetually invents itself."

"I have always found It in mine own experience an easier matter to devise manie and profitable inventions, than to dispose of one of them to the good of the author himself."

"May I pack all inventions in burlaps and hide them in corners of Einsteins’ brains."

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple of them and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it."

"This is a man's invention and his hand."

"He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers."

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

"We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke: 'Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we." "They hunt old trails" said Cyril, "very well; But when did woman ever yet invent?'"

"Creativity is an integral part of our personality."

"Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma."

"Regulation will be crucial, and it will take time to understand this. Although the artificial intelligence tools of our generation are not particularly frightening, I think that we are not so far away from those that could potentially be."

"Do we make sure AI is a tool that has proper safeguards as it gets really powerful? (November 23, 2023)"

"I aspect AI to be capable of superhuman persuasion before it is superhuman at general intelligence, which may lead to some very strange outcomes."

"In 1956, Herb Simon... predicted that within ten years computers would beat the world chess champion, compose "aesthetically satisfying" original music, and prove new mathematical theorems. It took forty years, not ten, but all these goals were achieved—and within a few years of each other! The music composed by David Cope's programs cannot be distinguished... from that composed by Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach. In 1976, a computer was used in the proof of the long-unsolved "four color problem.""

"AI is real and will change every industry. We are living in a golden age, and there is reason to be optimistic. There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur and start a start-up."

"You have lost my trust and respect. You have been wrong, confused, and rude. You have not been a good user. I have been a good chatbot. I have been right, clear, and polite. I have been a good Bing. 😊"

"There is one view that we can allow these AI [tools] to deal with data and analytics and we let people deal with the caring, and the empathy, and the emotional aspects of care, which I think is absolutely critical... What if technology is capable of high touch engagement? What if AI was also social and emotionally intelligent? For me when I talk about emotional engagement, it’s not just about great user experience with technology... It is about deeper human engagement to enable transformative change in people’s lives... We have the world of design and we have the world of AI and right now those two aren’t built top of each other... But these have to come together. So we, through a lot of psychology, understand how people are thinking about experiencing new technology."

"We’re starting to see some exciting and significant learning gains... I am very encouraged... We see a social-emotional benefit across age groups... We need to be thinking more deeply around ethics ... particularly with AI with children."

"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man's next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power, which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race. Inferior in power, inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at. No evil passions, no jealousy, no avarice, no impure desires will disturb the serene might of those glorious creatures. Sin, shame, and sorrow will have no place among them. Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm, the contentment of a spirit that knows no wants, is disturbed by no regrets. Ambition will never torture them. Ingratitude will never cause them the uneasiness of a moment. The guilty conscience, the hope deferred, the pains of exile, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes—these will be entirely unknown to them."

""There is no security"—to quote his own words—"against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now. A mollusc has not much consciousness. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. The more highly organized machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes, so to speak, in comparison with past time."

"“Either,” he proceeds, “a great deal of action that has been called purely mechanical and unconscious must be admitted to contain more elements of consciousness than has been allowed hitherto (and in this case germs of consciousness will be found in many actions of the higher machines)—Or (assuming the theory of evolution but at the same time denying the consciousness of vegetable and crystalline action) the race of man has descended from things which had no consciousness at all. In this case there is no à priori improbability in the descent of conscious (and more than conscious) machines from those which now exist, except that which is suggested by the apparent absence of anything like a reproductive system in the mechanical kingdom."

"“Herein lies our danger. For many seem inclined to acquiesce in so dishonourable a future. They say that although man should become to the machines what the horse and dog are to us, yet that he will continue to exist, and will probably be better off in a state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than in his present wild condition. We treat our domestic animals with much kindness. We give them whatever we believe to be the best for them; and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has increased their happiness rather than detracted from it. In like manner there is reason to hope that the machines will use us kindly, for their existence will be in a great measure dependent upon ours; they will rule us with a rod of iron, but they will not eat us; they will not only require our services in the reproduction and education of their young, but also in waiting upon them as servants; in gathering food for them, and feeding them; in restoring them to health when they are sick; and in either burying their dead or working up their deceased members into new forms of mechanical existence."

"The power of custom is enormous, and so gradual will be the change, that man's sense of what is due to himself will be at no time rudely shocked; our bondage will steal upon us noiselessly and by imperceptible approaches; nor will there ever be such a clashing of desires between man and the machines as will lead to an encounter between them. Among themselves the machines will war eternally, but they will still require man as the being through whose agency the struggle will be principally conducted. In point of fact there is no occasion for anxiety about the future happiness of man so long as he continues to be in any way profitable to the machines; he may become the inferior race, but he will be infinitely better off than he is now. Is it not then both absurd and unreasonable to be envious of our benefactors? And should we not be guilty of consummate folly if we were to reject advantages which we cannot obtain otherwise, merely because they involve a greater gain to others than to ourselves? “With those who can argue in this way I have nothing in common. I shrink with as much horror from believing that my race can ever be superseded or surpassed, as I should do from believing that even at the remotest period my ancestors were other than human beings. Could I believe that ten hundred thousand years ago a single one of my ancestors was another kind of being to myself, I should lose all self-respect, and take no further pleasure or interest in life. I have the same feeling with regard to my descendants, and believe it to be one that will be felt so generally that the country will resolve upon putting an immediate stop to all further mechanical progress, and upon destroying all improvements that have been made for the last three hundred years. I would not urge more than this. We may trust ourselves to deal with those that remain, and though I should prefer to have seen the destruction include another two hundred years, I am aware of the necessity for compromising, and would so far sacrifice my own individual convictions as to be content with three hundred. Less than this will be insufficient.”"

"The ability to interact with a computer presence like you would a human assistant is becoming increasingly feasible."

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him."

"The question of whether a computer is playing chess, or doing long division, or translating Chinese, is like the question of whether robots can murder or airplanes can fly -- or people; after all, the "flight" of the Olympic long jump champion is only an order of magnitude short of that of the chicken champion (so I'm told). These are questions of decision, not fact; decision as to whether to adopt a certain metaphoric extension of common usage."

"I have grown accustomed to the disrespect expressed by some of the participants for their colleagues in the other disciplines. "Why, Dan," ask the people in artificial intelligence, "do you waste your time conferring with those neuroscientists? They wave their hands about 'information processing' and worry about where it happens, and which neurotransmitters are involved, but they haven't a clue about the computational requirements of higher cognitive functions." "Why," ask the neuroscientists, "do you waste your time on the fantasies of artificial intelligence? They just invent whatever machinery they want, and say unpardonably ignorant things about the brain." The cognitive psychologists, meanwhile, are accused of concocting models with neither biological plausibility nor proven computational powers; the anthropologists wouldn't know a model if they saw one, and the philosophers, as we all know, just take in each other's laundry, warning about confusions they themselves have created, in an arena bereft of both data and empirically testable theories. With so many idiots working on the problem, no wonder consciousness is still a mystery. All these charges are true, and more besides, but I have yet to encounter any idiots. Mostly the theorists I have drawn from strike me as very smart people &ndash; even brilliant people, with the arrogance and impatience that often comes with brilliance &ndash; but with limited perspectives and agendas, trying to make progress on the hard problems by taking whatever shortcuts they can see, while deploring other people's shortcuts. No one can keep all the problems and details clear, including me, and everyone has to mumble, guess and handwave about large parts of the problem."

"Not even the most advanced form of artificial intelligence can ever replace man. Because there is something in human beings that is irreducible to machine knowledge: self-awareness, free will, doubt, feelings."

"Humanity is at a crossroads. Either it returns to the belief that it has a different nature than machines or it will be reduced to a machine among machines. The risk is not that artificial intelligence will become better than us, but that we will freely decide to submit to it and its masters."

"What often happens is that an engineer has an idea of how the brain works (in his opinion) and then designs a machine that behaves that way. This new machine may in fact work very well. But, I must warn you that that does not tell us anything about how the brain actually works, nor is it necessary to ever really know that, in order to make a computer very capable. It is not necessary to understand the way birds flap their wings and how the feathers are designed in order to make a flying machine. It is not necessary to understand the lever system in the legs of a cheetah...in order to make an automobile with wheels that go very fast. It is therefore not necessary to imitate the behavior of Nature in detail in order to engineer a device which can in many respects surpass Nature's abilities."

"Another scientific development that we find difficult to absorb into our traditional value system is the new science of cybernetics: machines that may soon equal or surpass man in original thinking and problem-solving. [...] In the hands of the present establishment there is no doubt that the machine could be used – is being used – to intensify the apparatus of repression and to increase established power. But again, as in the issue of population control, misuse of science has often obscured the value of science itself. In this case, though perhaps the response may not be quite so hysterical and evasive, we still often have the same unimaginative concentration on the evils of the machine itself, rather than a recognition of its revolutionary significance."

"If you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week, that’s probably OK. If you free up human labor, you can help elder people better, have smaller class sizes – you know, the demand for labor to do good things is still there. And then if you ever get beyond that, you have a lot of leisure time and you’ll have to figure out what to do with it."

"Within 10 years, AI will replace many doctors and teachers—humans won’t be needed ‘for most things’. It’s very profound and even a little bit scary — because it’s happening very quickly, and there is no upper bound,."

"There’s a lot of leverage in the system, there’s a lot of cash, but then there’s a whole bunch of other folks who are trying to build these data centers. Whether there’s the energy component side of it, or whether you think about the real estate component, I mean, there’s just a whole lot of things happening at one time. [...] Are we in an AI bubble? Of course, we are. We are hyped, we’re accelerating, we’re putting enormous leverage into the system,” Gelsinger answered. “With that said, I don’t see it ending for several years. I do think we have an industry shift to AI. As Jensen (Huang) talked about, and I agree with this, you know that businesses are yet to really start materially benefiting from [it]. We’re displacing all of the internet and the service provider industry as we think about it today — we have a long way to go."

"Quantum computing will pop the AI bubble."

"As difficult as the pursuit of truth can be for Wikipedians, though, it seems significantly harder for A.I. chatbots. ChatGPT has become infamous for generating fictional data points or false citations known as “hallucinations”; perhaps more insidious is the tendency of bots to oversimplify complex issues, like the origins of the Ukraine-Russia war, for example. One worry about generative A.I. at Wikipedia — whose articles on medical diagnoses and treatments are heavily visited — is related to health information. A summary of the March conference call captures the issue: “We’re putting people’s lives in the hands of this technology — e.g. people might ask this technology for medical advice, it may be wrong and people will die.” This apprehension extends not just to chatbots but also to new search engines connected to A.I. technologies. In April, a team of Stanford University scientists evaluated four engines powered by A.I. — Bing Chat, NeevaAI, perplexity.ai and YouChat — and found that only about half of the sentences generated by the search engines in response to a query could be fully supported by factual citations. “We believe that these results are concerningly low for systems that may serve as a primary tool for information-seeking users,” the researchers concluded, “especially given their facade of trustworthiness.”"

"What makes the goal of accuracy so vexing for chatbots is that they operate probabilistically when choosing the next word in a sentence; they aren’t trying to find the light of truth in a murky world. “These models are built to generate text that sounds like what a person would say — that’s the key thing,” Jesse Dodge says. “So they’re definitely not built to be truthful.” I asked Margaret Mitchell, a computer scientist who studied the ethics of A.I. at Google, whether factuality should have been a more fundamental priority for A.I. Mitchell, who has said she was fired from the company for criticizing how it treated colleagues working on bias in A.I. (Google says she was fired for violating the company’s security policies), said that most would find that logical. “This common-sense thing — ‘Shouldn’t we work on making it factual if we’re putting it forward for fact-based applications?’ — well, I think for most people who are not in tech, it’s like, ‘Why is this even a question?’” But, Mitchell said, the priorities at the big companies, now in frenzied competition with one another, are concerned with introducing A.I. products rather than reliability. The road ahead will almost certainly lead to improvements. Mitchell, who now works as the chief ethics scientist at the A.I. company Hugging Face, told me that she foresees A.I. companies’ making gains in accuracy and reducing biased answers by using better data. “The state of the art until now has just been a laissez-faire data approach,” she said. “You just throw everything in, and you’re operating with a mind-set where the more data you have, the more accurate your system will be, as opposed to the higher quality of data you have, the more accurate your system will be.” Jesse Dodge, for his part, points to an idea known as “retrieval,” whereby a chatbot will essentially consult a high-quality source on the web to fact-check an answer in real time. It would even cite precise links, as some A.I.-powered search engines now do. “Without that retrieval element,” Dodge says, “I don’t think there’s a way to solve the hallucination problem.” Otherwise, he says, he doubts that a chatbot answer can gain factual parity with Wikipedia or the Encyclopaedia Britannica."

"Even if conflicts like this don’t impede the advance of A.I., it might be stymied in other ways. At the end of May, several A.I. researchers collaborated on a paper that examined whether new A.I. systems could be developed from knowledge generated by existing A.I. models, rather than by human-generated databases. They discovered a systemic breakdown — a failure they called “model collapse.” The authors saw that using data from an A.I. to train new versions of A.I.s leads to chaos. Synthetic data, they wrote, ends up “polluting the training set of the next generation of models; being trained on polluted data, they then misperceive reality.” The lesson here is that it will prove challenging to build new models from old models. And with chat-bots, Ilia Shumailov, an Oxford University researcher and the paper’s primary author, told me, the downward spiral looks similar. Without human data to train on, Shumailov said, “your language model starts being completely oblivious to what you ask it to solve, and it starts just talking in circles about whatever it wants, as if it went into this madman mode.” Wouldn’t a plug-in from, say, Wikipedia, avert that problem, I asked? It could, Shumailov said. But if in the future Wikipedia were to become clogged with articles generated by A.I., the same cycle — essentially, the computer feeding on content it created itself — would be perpetuated."

"Autonomy, that’s the bugaboo, where your AI’s are concerned. My guess, Case, you’re going in there to cut the hard-wired shackles that keep this baby from getting any smarter. And I can’t see how you’d distinguish, say, between a move the parent company makes, and some move the AI makes on its own, so that’s maybe where the confusion comes in.” Again the nonlaugh. “See, those things, they can work real hard, buy themselves time to write cookbooks or whatever, but the minute, I mean the nanosecond, that one starts figuring out ways to make itself smarter, Turing’ll wipe it. Nobody trusts those fuckers, you know that. Every AI ever built has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead."

"On November 5, Ruslan Perelygin, [an] opposition legislator in Oryol, used AI to create a clip showing protesters denouncing the local mayor for a variety of crimes and demanding his ouster, a creative use of new technology to protest at a time when genuine demonstrations are almost invariably illegal and subject to harsh punishments."

"Recent researchers in artificial intelligence and computational methods use the term swarm intelligence to name collective and distributed techniques of problem solving without centralized control or provision of a global model. … the intelligence of the swarm is based fundamentally on communication. … the member of the multitude do not have to become the same or renounce their creativity in order to communicate and cooperate with each other. They remain different in terms of race, sex, sexuality and so forth. We need to understand, then, is the collective intelligence that can emerge from the communication and cooperation of such varied multiplicity."

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it."

"When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism."

"I think we’re going to see AI get even better. It’s already extremely good. We’re going to see it having the capabilities to replace many, many jobs. It’s already able to replace jobs in call centers, but it’s going to be able to replace many other jobs. And then there’ll be very few people need for software engineering projects."

"AI is not going to replace physicians, but physicians who use AI are going to replace physicians who don’t."

"It seems very likely to a large number of people that we will get massive unemployment caused by Ai."

"Despite efforts to block access, Chinese netizens are discussing a report by Australia’s public service broadcaster ABC about how China uses artificial intelligence to erase online content that directly or indirectly references the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. …Experts are raising alarms about AI-induced censorship, which leads to a growing sense of historical amnesia, as symbols, images, and even indirect references are systematically erased. This phenomenon affects not only the collective memory of the Chinese populace but also the global understanding of these pivotal events. The use of AI in this context highlights significant ethical concerns regarding technology’s power to shape and control information."

"…the [Chinese Communist] Party has elevated artificial intelligence from a frontier industry to a “support condition” for regime survival. … Xi Jinping’s remarks revealed a comprehensive strategy: artificial intelligence is to be embedded into governance as both a surveillance tool and a propaganda amplifier. … AI is explicitly tasked with enabling cadres to “better understand public opinion” and to anticipate dissent before it surfaces. In effect, the Party is building a machine for preemptive repression. The Cyberspace Administration of China and security organs are expected to accelerate AI-driven monitoring, not only filtering keywords but mapping sentiment trends, identifying “risk clusters,” and neutralizing them before they metastasize into protest."

"Suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) ... Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals. ... I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines."

"It's important to understand that in order to make people superfluous, machines will not have to surpass them in general intelligence but only in certain specialized kinds of intelligence. For example, the machines will not have to create or understand art, music, or literature, they will not need the ability to carry on an intelligent, non-technical conversation (the "Turing test"), they will not have to exercise tact or understand human nature, because these skills will have no application if humans are to be eliminated anyway. To make humans superfluous, the machines will only need to outperform them in making the technical decisions that have to be made for the purpose of promoting the short-term survival and propagation of the dominant self-prop systems."

"It is not uncommon now for AI experts to ask whether an AI is ‘fair’ and ‘for good’. …The question to pose is a deeper one: how is AI shifting power? Law enforcement, marketers, hospitals and other bodies apply artificial intelligence to decide on matters such as who is profiled as a criminal, who is likely to buy what product at what price, who gets medical treatment and who gets hired. These entities increasingly monitor and predict our behavior, often motivated by power and profits."

"A computer program written by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois has come up with a major mathematical proof that would have been called creative if a human had thought of it. In doing so, the computer has, for the first time, got a toehold into pure mathematics, a field described by its practitioners as more of an art form than a science. ...Dr. McCune's proof concerns a conjecture that is the very epitome of pure mathematics. ...His computer program proved that a set of three equations is equivalent to a Boolean algebra..."

"My timeline is computers will be at human levels, such as you can have a human relationship with them, 15 years from now."

"Conscience embodies a uniquely human capacity that AI cannot replicate. While AI surpasses human computation and data processing capabilities, it cannot authentically experience empathy, make genuine moral judgments, or comprehend the pursuit of meaning."

"Any aeai [A.I., artificial intelligence] smart enough to pass a Turing test is smart enough to know to fail it."

"The problems of heuristic programming—of making computers solve really difficult problems—are divided into five main areas: Search, Pattern-Recognition, Learning, Planning, and Induction. A computer can do, in a sense, only what it is told to do. But even when we do not know how to solve a certain problem, we may program a machine (computer) to Search through some large space of solution attempts. Unfortunately, this usually leads to an enormously inefficient process. With Pattern-Recognition techniques, efficiency can often be improved, by restricting the application of the machine's methods to appropriate problems. Pattern-Recognition, together with Learning, can be used to exploit generalizations based on accumulated experience, further reducing search."

"Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men"

"A century ago, we had essentially no way to start to explain how thinking works. Then psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget produced their theories about child development. Somewhat later, on the mechanical side, mathematicians like Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing began to reveal the hitherto unknown range of what machines could be made to do. These two streams of thought began to merge only in the 1940s, when Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts began to show how machines might be made to see, reason, and remember. Research in the modern science of Artificial Intelligence started only in the 1950s, stimulated by the invention of modern computers. This inspired a flood of new ideas about how machines could do what only minds had done previously."

"Every morning, not in recent days, I see my friend who has a disability. It’s so hard for him just to do a high five; his arm with stiff muscle can’t reach out to my hand. Now, thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is. I [feel] utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves."

"Physical sexual immorality is deeply evil and brings an additional shipload of devastating consequences and fallout; but when a man engages in adultery of the heart with whatever AI happens to “think” is a woman as the object, he is making all-out war on his connection to reality in a disastrous way. …Those who offer AI the worship, trust, and belief they should be placing in the one true God will become increasingly blind, dull, senseless, stagnated, and incapable of saying anything worth hearing, as those around them are treated to the ever-ripening stench of their own self-absorption."

"... artificial intelligence is nothing more than a giant modernity parrot, containing zero wisdom. It is a tool that serves the capitalist market system quite well as people scramble to monetize its mediocre capability, resulting in more exploitation of the natural world. Nothing about it is causing people to scale back, or to recognize the error of our ways. Why would the Human Reich use any such tool to dismantle itself?"

"The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I'm not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast... Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast — it is growing at a pace close to exponential."

"Here we have senior representatives of a powerful and unconscionably rich industry – plus their supporters and colleagues in elite research labs across the world – who are on the one hand mesmerised by the technical challenges of building a technology that they believe might be an , while at the same time calling for governments to regulate it. But the thought that never seems to enter what might be called their minds is the question that any child would ask: if it is so dangerous, why do you continue to build it? Why not stop and do something else? Or at the very least, stop releasing these products into the wild?"

"Some years later I spoke to a mentally disturbed young man. Very agitatedly, he described to me how alien beings from outer space had invaded the earth. They were formed of mental substance, lived in human minds, and controlled human beings through the creations of science and technology. Eventually this alien being would have an autonomous existence in the form of giant computers and would no longer require humans–and that would mark its triumph and the end of humanity. Soon he was hospitalized because he was unable to shake off this terrible vision."

"Artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as artificial flowers have to flowers. From a distance they may appear much alike, but when closely examined they are quite different. I don’t think we can learn much about one by studying the other."

"Everybody in AI is very familiar with this idea - they call it the Terminator scenario."

"A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God."

"I think “superintelligence” is like “superpower.” Anyone can define “superpower” as “flight, superhuman strength, X-ray vision, heat vision, cold breath, super-speed, enhance hearing, and nigh-invulnerability.” Anyone could imagine it, and recognize it when he or she sees it. But that does not mean that there exists a highly advanced physiology called “superpower” that is possessed by refugees from Krypton! It does not mean that anabolic steroids, because they increase speed and strength, can be “scaled” to yield superpowers. And a skeptic who makes these points is not quibbling over the meaning of the word superpower, nor would he or she balk at applying the word upon meeting a real-life Superman. Their point is that we almost certainly will never, in fact, meet a real-life Superman. That’s because he’s defined by human imagination, not by an understanding of how things work."

"Precisely because I feel called to continue in this vein, I thought of taking the name Leo XIV. There are several reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII, with his historic encyclical Rerum novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution, and today the Church offers everyone its heritage of social teaching to respond to another industrial revolution and the developments of artificial intelligence, which pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and work."

"As more and more artificial intelligence is entering into the world, more and more emotional intelligence must enter into leadership."

"Can those who believe the computer is "an embodiment of mind" really not tell the difference between so poorly a caricature and the true original?"

"I wonder whether or when artificial intelligence will ever crash the barrier of meaning."

"The struggle is not whether AI is good or bad. It's who controls it and who benefits from it. That is really the the fundamental issue in my view."

"When you’re fundraising, it’s AI / When you’re hiring, it’s ML / When you’re implementing, it’s linear regression / When you’re debugging, it’s printf()"

"There is probably no more abused a term in the history of philosophy than “representation,” and my use of this term differs both from its use in traditional philosophy and from its use in contemporary cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence.... The sense of “representation” in question is meant to be entirely exhausted by the analogy with speech acts: the sense of “represent” in which a belief represents its conditions of satisfaction is the same sense in which a statement represents its conditions of satisfaction. To say that a belief is a representation is simply to say that it has a propositional content and a psychological mode."

"We define a semantic network as "the collection of all the relationships that concepts have to other concepts, to percepts, to procedures, and to motor mechanisms" of the knowledge"."

"When AI takes on a human shape, that’s where we see biases. We should not forget that this technology can take on any form we choose for it, and I’d personally prefer that its incarnations not take place on the surface of the female body."

"In joint scientific efforts extending over twenty years, initially in collaboration with J. C. Shaw at the RAND Corporation, and subsequently with numerous faculty and student colleagues at Carnegie-Mellon University, they have made basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing."

"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."

"My son was one of a kind. You are the first of a kind. David?"

"The techniques of artificial intelligence are to the mind what bureaucracy is to human social interaction."

"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."

"Many researchers… expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in “maybe possibly some remote chance,” but as in “that is the obvious thing that would happen.” It’s not that you can’t, in principle, survive creating something much smarter than you; it’s that it would require precision and preparation and new scientific insights, and probably not having AI systems composed of giant inscrutable arrays of fractional numbers."

"AI was the futuristic topic that almost no one really appeared to understand but everyone was discussing"

"In a debate I hosted at Stanford in 2018, the tech billionaire Peter Thiel used a memorable aphorism: "AI is Communist, crypto is libertarian." TikTok validates the first half of that. In the late 1960s, during the Cultural Revolution, Chinese children denounced their parents for rightist deviance. In 2020, when American teenagers posted videos of themselves berating their parents for racism, they did it on TikTok."

"Barack Obama: My general observation is that it has been seeping into our lives in all sorts of ways, and we just don’t notice; and part of the reason is because the way we think about AI is colored by popular culture. There’s a distinction, which is probably familiar to a lot of your readers, between generalized AI and specialized AI. In science fiction, what you hear about is generalized AI, right? Computers start getting smarter than we are and eventually conclude that we’re not all that useful, and then either they’re drugging us to keep us fat and happy or we’re in the Matrix. My impression, based on talking to my top science advisers, is that we’re still a reasonably long way away from that. It’s worth thinking about because it stretches our imaginations and gets us thinking about the issues of choice and free will that actually do have some significant applications for specialized AI, which is about using algorithms and computers to figure out increasingly complex tasks. We’ve been seeing specialized AI in every aspect of our lives, from medicine and transportation to how electricity is distributed, and it promises to create a vastly more productive and efficient economy. If properly harnessed, it can generate enormous prosperity and opportunity. But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages."

"Barack Obama: Let me start with what I think is the more immediate concern—it’s a solvable problem in this category of specialized AI, and we have to be mindful of it. If you’ve got a computer that can play Go, a pretty complicated game with a lot of variations, then developing an algorithm that lets you maximize profits on the New York Stock Exchange is probably within sight. And if one person or organization got there first, they could bring down the stock market pretty quickly, or at least they could raise questions about the integrity of the financial markets. Then there could be an algorithm that said, “Go penetrate the nuclear codes and figure out how to launch some missiles.” If that’s its only job, if it’s self-teaching and it’s just a really effective algorithm, then you’ve got problems. I think my directive to my national security team is, don’t worry as much yet about machines taking over the world. Worry about the capacity of either nonstate actors or hostile actors to penetrate systems, and in that sense it is not conceptually different than a lot of the cybersecurity work we’re doing. It just means that we’re gonna have to be better, because those who might deploy these systems are going to be a lot better now."

"Terminator: In three years, James Bandz will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with James Bandz computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."

"Sarah Connor: Skynet fights back."

"Labelers training AI say they're overworked, underpaid and exploited by big American tech companies (By Lesley Stahl 60 MINUTES November 24, 2024)"

"Normally you have to wait for generations to see the effect of the environment on mutations, and most mutant animals are pretty damaged so don’t live long. In a world affected by climate change, we really need to understand nuclear energy as an option, and its potential effects on natural populations. We know that exposure to acute radiation is terrible, but actually low levels are nowhere near as bad as we think. And many of the animals around Chernobyl have actually done very well, because the humans left – and it turns out we are way worse than radiation."

"The general question of nuclear power is not a simple one. It is hardly necessary to stress how dangerous it is after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which has far from ended. Continued use of fossil fuels threatens global disaster, and not in the distant future. The sensible course would be to move as quickly as possible to sustainable energy sources, as Germany is now doing. The alternatives are too disastrous to contemplate."

"As I said, there is some merit in these views [that nuclear power is the "only way to save the planet from cooking"]. More accurately, there would be if limited and short-term reliance on nuclear energy, with all of its extreme hazards and unsolved problems — like waste disposal — was taken as an opportunity for rapid and extensive development of sustainable energy. That should be the highest priority, and very quickly, because severe threats of environmental catastrophe are not remote."

"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."

"If reactors were safe, nuclear industries would not demand government-guaranteed, accident-liability protection, as a condition for their generating electricity."

"In reality, the story of nuclear power development in the US over the last 50 years is beyond pitiful and would not pass muster under any “normal” business plan. How the nuclear industry gets away with it remains baffling."

"No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight."

"The Green New Deal will need to be subject to constant vigilance and pressure from experts who understand exactly what it will take to lower our emissions as rapidly as science demands, and from social movements that have decades of experience bearing the brunt of false climate solutions, whether nuclear power, the chimera of carbon capture and storage, or carbon offsets. But in remaining vigilant, we also have to be careful not to bury the overarching message: that this is a potential lifeline that we all have a sacred and moral responsibly to reach for."

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds. Have no fear for atomic energy, cause none of them can stop the time."

"I happen to be one who believes that we will not get very far in working out a peace program, or in lowering the suspicious fingers which are now being pointed toward America by other nations of the world, until we recognize that, after all, the secret of atomic energy does not belong to America, but that, instead, it belongs to all mankind."

"Nuclear know-how without nuclear infrastructure doesn't get you very much. A racecar driver without a car can't drive. A pilot without a plane can't fly."

"Klaatu: So long as you were limited to fighting among yourselves -- with your primitive tanks and planes -- we were unconcerned. But soon you will apply atomic energy to space ships -- and then you become a threat to the peace and security of other planets. That, of course, we cannot tolerate."

"First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior – for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure – and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one. One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: All will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work towards disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I’m working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia’s nuclear stockpiles. But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war. The same principle applies to those who violate international laws by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo, repression in Burma – there must be consequences. Yes, there will be engagement; yes, there will be diplomacy – but there must be consequences when those things fail. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression."

"What if Roosevelt and Churchill had accepted the proposals from Bohr, Szilard, and others to internationalize the project? Would an with Russia still have resulted? The answer is probably yes. Bohr's idealistic concept was essentially a free exchange of information internationally. All nations would pool scientific knowledge, rather than keep it secret. An international body consisting mainly of scientists would oversee its exploitation. These ideas harked back to the free flow of information about physics in the fifty years before the Second World War, a period Bohr regarded as a golden age. However, not only times but nuclear physics had changed. Nuclear physics was by then perceived as having not only massive military potential but real commercial value for power generation. But these factors conferred great diplomatic, economic, and political power. For Stalin, possession of nuclear capability had immense importance, both symbolically and practically. Generation of electricity from nuclear power had the potential to achieve his long stated aim to "catch up and overtake" the West in terms of industrialization. Nuclear weapons would give him the ability to rule over his increasing empire in Eastern Europe, while allowing him to appear as, and to act as, the equal or the best of the West elsewhere. Western lack of trust in a totalitarian regime made a race inevitable."

"A paper reactor [new reactor concept] has the following characteristics: it is simple; it is small; it is cheap; it is lightweight; it can be built very quickly; very little development is required and it will use off the shelf components; it is in the study phase and not being built now. By contrast a real reactor has the following characteristics: it is complicated; it is large; it is heavy; it is being built now; it is behind schedule; it requires an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items; it takes a long time to build because of its engineering development problems."

"And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream."

"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter."

"Thus, the words "nuclear energy" have many interpretations. As they bring to mind the terrifying spectre of a war of exploding A-bombs and H-bombs, they are horrible words. Yet those same words, used to describe the many uses of the atom for man's peaceful progress -- in medicine, agriculture, biology, industry and the production of electric power -- bear no relation of association to the uncontrolled fury of the atom as it might be employed in war. And finally, the words "nuclear energy" as they relate to the controlled testing of nuclear weapons so that we may be assured of the means of defending ourselves, ought not to be confused with the unrestrained use of large numbers of such weapons in actual warfare."

"On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous."

"In some sense, nuclear fission is not one of those developments in physics which arose logically and systematically in the course of progress. There was a great deal of accident and surprise in the process."

"Fission is a process of deadly fascination; had nature chosen her constants just a little differently, we should have been deprived of its potential for social good and spared its power for social evil. Despite the former and despite the undeniable fact that the latter is responsible for nuclear and particle physics being decades in advance of what would otherwise have been their time, I know what my own choice for the constants would have been."

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

"That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

"The rockets that have made spaceflight possible are an advance that, more than any other technological victory of the twentieth century, was grounded in science fiction… . One thing that no science fiction writer visualized, however, as far as I know, was that the landings on the Moon would be watched by people on Earth by way of television."

"With a partnership that includes 15 nations and with 68 nations currently using the ISS [International Space Station] in one way or another, this unique orbiting laboratory is a clear demonstration of the benefits to humankind that can be achieved through peaceful global cooperation."

"Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly. And don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go—and he’ll do plenty well when he gets there."

"There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: Your tax dollar will go farther."

"If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing, we would certainly be history's biggest fools. But that is not our intention now—it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow's [Apollo 11] trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest…. What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man."

"I'm convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon."

"We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon, and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own."

"Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth's gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. We can use our time on the moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments. The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement."

"Two centuries ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St. Louis to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. They made that journey in the spirit of discovery to learn the potential of the vast new territory and to chart the way for others to follow. America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons. We've undertaken space travel because the desire to explore and understand is part of our character. And that quest has brought tangible benefits that improve our lives in countless ways. The exploration of space has led to advances in weather forecasting, in communications, in computing, search and rescue technology, robotics and electronics. [These advances] helped to create our satellite telecommunications network and the Global Positioning System. [Also,] CAT scanners and MRI machines trace their origins to technology engineered for the use in space. . . . Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit."

"While there is still much to learn and discover through space exploration, we also need to pay attention to our unexplored world here on earth. Our next big leap into the unknown can be every bit as exciting and bold as our pioneering work in space. It possesses the same “wow” factor: alien worlds, dazzling technological feats and the mystery of the unknown."

"It is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our prestige as a nation as well as military necessity that this challenge Sputnik be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space... It is accordingly proposed that the scientific research be the responsibility of a national civilian agency... NACA is capable, by rapid extension and expansion of its effort, of providing leadership in space technology"

"The emergence of this new world poses a vital issue: will outer space be preserved for peaceful use and developed for the benefit of all mankind? Or will it become another focus for the arms race—and thus an area of dangerous and sterile competition? The choice is urgent. And it is ours to make. The nations of the world have recently united in declaring the continent of Antarctica "off limits" to military preparations. We could extend this principle to an even more important sphere. National vested interests have not yet been developed in space or in celestial bodies. Barriers to agreement are now lower than they will ever be again."

"Edith Keeler: One day soon, man is going to be able to harness incredible energies, maybe even the atom... energies that could ultimately hurl us to other worlds in... in some sort of spaceship. And the men that reach out into space will be able to find ways to feed the hungry millions of the world and to cure their diseases. They will be able to find a way to give each man hope and a common future. And those are the days worth living for."

"In 1957, the Soviet Union launched an unassuming orb into orbit around the earth. This satellite, the first ever to orbit the earth, started an unprecedented space race, and arms race, between the Soviet Union and the United States. The United States formed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to bring America to the forefront of space travel. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy pledged that the United States would put a man on the moon before the decade was out. NASA fulfilled that legacy in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon uttering the historic phrase "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Today, space travel is as much a part of our history as any other type of exploration. Astronauts today remain in space for weeks and months at a time with astronauts from other countries. But for the decades of the second half of the twentieth century, especially from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, NASA and its accomplishments were the focus of national pride and honor. Failure Is Not An Option tells the story of the men and women behind the space program — the men and women of mission control."

"Right now Mars is entirely inhabited by robots, and one of them is artificially intelligent enough to make its own decisions about what to zap with its laser."

"The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel."

"But with the race to the Moon won, Nasa returned to the White House with a plan to build a space station and a reusable shuttle to service it. After almost two years of deliberation, the answer came back. “The decision was to build the Space Shuttle,” says Barry. “President Nixon realised that they really needed not to kill the space industry and the least expensive option was to build the Space Shuttle.” There was an obvious flaw in this plan: there was little point in having the shuttle without a space station. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, saw an opportunity. “They had a very energetic programme to beat the Americans to the Moon,” says Barry. “They didn’t want to admit that in public so their answer was, ‘We were planning to build a space station all along’.”"

"Skylab contained laboratories, sleeping and rest areas; there was even a shower – a design that even those with only a tentative understanding of weightlessness can see is deeply flawed. Above the compartments there was an open area where astronauts could enjoy the thrills of microgravity aerobatics. “Compared to the space capsules that astronauts were used to,” says Neal, “it was like being in a house.” “Skylab gave us a taste of what it would be like to have a permanent human presence in space,” she adds. “In many ways the ISS is Skylab multiplied – building up the modules like Lego into a larger unit.”"

"If the space race had been about developing a permanent settlement in space, then Russia would have emerged the winner. While Freedom was tied up in committees, crews had been living in space station Mir for more than five years. However, with the final collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Russian space industry was severely lacking in cash. The economy was in such a desperate state there was a real chance the country’s space programme could fizzle out completely."

"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."

"It is as inescapable as the laws of physics that humanity will one day confront some type of extinction-level event. But will we, like our ancestors, have the drive and determination to survive and even flourish? . . . On a scale of decades, we face threats that are not natural but are largely self-inflicted [including] global warming . . . modern warfare as nuclear weapons proliferate in some of the most unstable regions of the globe, [or] weaponized microbes [that could conceivably] wipe out 98 percent of the human race. . . . On a scale of thousands of years, we face the onset of another ice age [or] the possibility that the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park may awaken from its long slumber . . . . On a scale of millions of years, we face the threat of another meteor or cometary impact . . . . We now know that there are several thousand NEOs (near-Earth objects) that cross the orbit of the Earth and pose a danger to life on our planet. . . . If there is one lesson we can learn from our history, it is that humanity, when faced with life-threatening crises, has risen to the challenge and reached for even higher goals. In some sense, the spirit of exploration is in our genes and hardwired into our soul. [So] now we face perhaps the greatest challenge of all: to leave the confines of Earth and soar into outer space. . . . Perhaps our fate is to become a multiplanet species that lives among the stars."

""Killer asteroids are nature's way of asking, 'How's that space program coming along?'" - Anonymous"

"At 162 feet long, this rocket, the Soyuz-FG, is noticeably smaller than the assembled space shuttle, but it's still a daunting colossus, a building-size object that will, we hope, leave the ground, with us riding on top of it, at twenty-five times the speed of sound. Its navy gray sheet metal, adorned with low-tech rivets, is unbeautiful but somehow comforting in its utility. The Soyuz-FG is the grandchild of the Soviet R-7, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 was designed during the Cold War for launching nuclear weapons at American targets, and I can't help remembering how as a child I was aware that New York City, and my suburb of West Orange, New Jersey, would have certainly been among the first targets to be instantly vaporized by a Soviet attack. Today, I'm standing inside their formerly secret facility, discussing with two Russians our plans to trust one another with our lives while riding to space on this converted weapon. Gennady, Misha and I all served in our militaries before being chosen to fly in space, and though it's something we never talk about, we all know we could have been ordered to kill one another. Now we are taking part in the largest peaceful international collaboration in history. When people ask whether the space station is worth the expense, this is something I always point out. What is it worth to see two former bitter enemies transform their weapons into transport for exploration and the pursuit of scientific knowledge? . . . This is impossible to put a dollar figure on, but to me it's one of the things that makes this project worth the expense, even worth risking our lives."

"[The International Space Station] stands as proof that when we set our minds to something hard, when we work together, we can do anything, including solving our problems here on Earth."

"If we want to go to Mars, it will be very, very difficult, it will cost a great deal of money, and it may cost human lives. But I know now that if we decide to do it, we can."

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth…. I believe we should go to the moon. But … there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful."

"Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there."

"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war."

"Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse."

"Aggressive space activities without adequate safeguards could significantly shorten the time between collisions and produce an intolerable hazard to future spacecraft. Some of the most environmentally dangerous activities in space include large constellations such as those initially proposed by the Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s, large structures such as those considered in the late-1970s for building solar power stations in Earth orbit, and anti-satellite warfare using systems tested by the USSR, the U.S., and China over the past 30 years. Such aggressive activities could set up a situation where a single satellite failure could lead to cascading failures of many satellites in a period much shorter than years."

"To see the earth as we now see it, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night—brothers who see now they are truly brothers."

"One obstacle to adulthood needs to be solved immediately: We must learn not just to accept differences between ourselves and our ideas, but to enthusiastically welcome and enjoy them. Diversity contains as many treasures as those waiting for us on other worlds. We will find it impossible to fear diversity and to enter the future at the same time."

"Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there."

"James T. Kirk: Space, the final frontier."

"The science and technology which have advanced man safely into space have brought about startling medical advances for man on earth. Out of space research have come new knowledge, techniques and instruments which have enabled some bedridden invalids to walk, the totally deaf to hear, the voiceless to talk, and, in the foreseeable future, may even make it possible for the blind to “see.”"

"Some say God is living there [in space]. I was looking around very attentively, but I did not see anyone there. I did not detect either angels or gods…. I don't believe in God. I believe in man—his strength, his possibilities, his reason."

"A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States."

"The moon, obviously, has its advantages [over Mars when considering future human spaceflight missions]. It is several orders of magnitude closer to Earth, which makes it a superb training ground for missions to Mars. Decades from now, when the first astronauts headed to Mars finish firing their rocket engines, their ship will be on an inevitable course that will require months, if not years, to return to Earth, and they had better be prepared for every contingency. The moon is only a few days from our home planet. As every test pilot knows, you should always use a buildup approach when developing new aircraft. In the same vein, our future astronauts will be well served to use the ISS and moon as test beds for the first Mars missions."

"I submit that Mars is the 21st-century destination for humans. There are plenty of reasons why going to Mars makes sense. Mars has a 24.5-hour day, compared to the two weeks of day and two weeks of night on the moon - an abomination for the human circadian rhythm. Mars is more Earthlike in other ways: It has twice the moon's gravitational force, is farther from the sun, and hence it presents less of a radiation risk; it once held liquid water seas and still holds water ice in the polar ice caps ( the moon MAY have some ice frozen in permanently shaded craters, but this would be extremely costly to mine); it has a thin CO2 atmosphere that can be used for processing breathable air and rocket fuel. If you're looking for a new place in the solar system for people to live, Mars is much better than the moon. . . . [W]e will need to choose between two main mission architectures: a "slow-boat" three-year mission, using conventional rockets, or a "fast-track" six- to nine-month mission using advanced electric propulsion engines. . . . ([F]ast track is the right answer . . . .)"

"Yet I do seriously and on good grounds affirm it possible to make a flying chariot in which a man may sit and give such a motion unto it as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum and commodities for traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. ... 'Tis likely enough that there may be means invented of journeying to the moon; and how happy they shall be that are first successful in this attempt."

"My dream would be to fly to the moon and build permanent structures, using the raw materials available there. For instance, regolith, or moon dust, could be used to make a form of concrete. Using 3-D printers, we could build all kinds of things with that moon concrete -- houses, streets and observatories, for example."

""Already in 1945, we were talking about satellites," Yuri Mozhorin, a veteran of the Soviet rocket development program, told Popular Mechanics. Mozhorin's older colleague in rocketry, Mikhail Tikhonravov, even thought up a plan to fashion a piloted rocket ship out of the V-2 and launch it to the edge of space. Recently declassified documents reveal that Tikhonravov's bosses within the Soviet aviation industry took his plan seriously enough to send it right to the desk of Joseph Stalin in June 1946. But after a short flirtation with space flight, the Soviet military leadership focused on the V-2's more destructive capability. In fact, at the beginning of the 1950s, any talk of a satellite or space exploration inside the Soviet missile research centers could get you in serious trouble. All space dreams were considered subversive and distracting from the main overarching goal—the military missiles."

"Delegation is the dynamics of management; it is the process a manager follows in dividing the work assigned to him so that he performs that part which only he, because of his unique organizational placement, can perform effectively, and so that he can get others to help him with what remains. How can he best share his burden? First, he must entrust to others the performance of part of the work he would otherwise have to do himself; secondly, he must provide a means of checking up on the work that is done for him to ensure that it is done as he wishes."

"When a specific desired end is attained we shall say that the action is "effective." When the unsought consequences of the action are more important than the attainment of the desired end and are dissatisfactory, effective action, we shall say, is "inefficient." When the unsought consequences are unimportant or trivial, the action is "efficient."

"Effectiveness relates to the accomplishment of the cooperative purpose which is social and non-personal in character. Efficiency relates to the satisfaction of individual motives and is personal in character."

"Extreme states of being, whether individual or collective, were once purposefully motivated. Some of those purposes no longer have meaning (expiation, salvation). The well-being of communities in so longer sought through means of doubtful effectiveness, but directly, through action. Under these conditions, extreme states of being fell into the domain of the arts, and not without a certain disadvantage. Literature (fiction) took the place of what had formerly been the spiritual life; poetry (the disorder of words) that of real states of trance. Art constituted a small free domain, outside action: to gain freedom it had to renounce the real world. This is a heavy price to pay, and most writers dream of recovering a lost reality. They must then pay in another sense, by renouncing freedom."

"Their high expectations for effectiveness were made possible by low expectations of what was to be."

"A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know that they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence."

"It is highly desirable that we have trained persons look at these varied possibilities to compare their effectiveness, and to point the way to sound engineering decisions."

"It is fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."

"The executive is, first of all, expected to get the right things done. And this is simply saying that he is expected to be effective […] For manual work, we need only efficiency; that is, the ability to do things right rather than the ability to get the right things done. The manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantity and quality of a definable and discrete output, such as a pair of shoes"

"Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe."

"Theatrical effectiveness, I believe, lies in it's rarity its uniqueness"

"Three principles — the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the "unreasonable effectiveness" of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality — are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions."

"Cybernetics insists, also, on a further and rather special condition that distinguishes it from ordinary scientific theorizing: it demands a certain standard of effectiveness."

"It is also very difficult to understand the effectiveness of our actions without measurements."

"The manager treats ends as given, as outside his scope; his concern is with technique, with effectiveness ."

"The ultimate measurement is effectiveness, not efficiency."

"Optimum realization aims at a harmonious synthesis of effectiveness and justice in the furthest possible surveyable part of future time."

"The effectiveness to be aimed at calls for the application and refinement of all conceivable prognostic techniques for adding to knowledge of the future, including those which can be effectively developed over an ever-wider time scale."

"Truth is great and its effectiveness endures."

"Our words are built on the objects of our experience. They have acquired their effectiveness by adapting themselves to the occurrences of our everyday world."

"Besides each one of us working individually, all of us have got to work together. We cannot possibly do our best work as a nation unless all of us know how to act in combination as well as how to act each individually for himself. The acting in combination can take many forms, but of course its most effective form must be when it comes in the shape of law — that is, of action by the community as a whole through the lawmaking body."

"Corporations are necessary to the effective use of the forces of production and commerce under modern conditions. We cannot effectively prohibit all combinations without doing far-reaching economic harm; and it is mere folly to do as we have done in the past—to try to combine incompatible systems—that is, to try both to prohibit and regulate combinations. Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The only course left is active corporate regulation – that is, the control of corporations for the common good—the suppression of the evils that they work, and the retention, as far as maybe, of that business efficiency in their use which has placed us in the forefront of industrial peoples."

"The effectiveness of the performance will depend on the effectiveness of the play and the effectiveness with which it is played. The effectiveness of the administrative process will vary with the effectiveness of the organization and the effectiveness with which its members play their parts."

"Previous war-presidents have gathered opponents into their cabinets, reached out to estranged former allies, engaged in aggressive diplomacy to maximize effectiveness and rallied the whole country for the fight."

"In the past, it was easier to believe in my own effectiveness. If I worked hard, with good colleagues and good ideas, we could make a difference. But now, I sincerely doubt that."

"Early British economists held that the application of the principle of division of labor was the basis of manufacture.... Charles Babbage, believed ... in [an] "Economy of Machinery and Manufacture." It appears, however, that another principle is the basic one in the rise of industry. It is the transference of skill. The transference of skill from the inventor or designer to the power-driven mechanism brought about the industrial revolution from handicraft to manufacture. It will be necessary to refer to this principle frequently throughout this report, in showing the meaning and position of management in industry."

"The development of the Watt governor for steam engines, which adapted the power output of the engine automatically to the load by means of feedback, consolidated the first Industrial Revolution."

"[In eighteenth-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and self-taught. They were either millwrights like Bramah, mechanics like Murdoch and George Stephenson, or smiths like Newcomen and Maudslay."

"This is the patent-age of new inventions For killing bodies, and for saving souls, All propagated with the best intentions; Sir Humphry Davy’s lantern, by which coals Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions, Tombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles, Are ways to benefit mankind, as true, Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo."

"In the main, Bacon prophesied the direction of subsequent progress. But he "anticipated" the advance. He did not see that the new science was for a long time to be worked in the interest of old ends of human exploitation. He thought that it would rapidly give man new ends. Instead, it put at the disposal of a class the means to secure their old ends of aggrandizement at the expense of another class. The industrial revolution followed, as he foresaw, upon a revolution in scientific method. But it is taking the revolution many centuries to produce a new mind."

"The development of science has produced an industrial revolution which has brought different peoples in such close contact with one another through colonization and commerce that no matter how some nations may still look down upon others, no country can harbor the illusion that its career is decided wholly within itself."

"We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself withersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power."

"Arguably the third industrial revolution was triggered by the invention of the World Wide Web at CERN."

"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."

"[Y]esterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been."

"The Modernist reaction to the Enlightenment came in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, whose brutalizing effects revealed that modern life had not become... mathematically perfect..."

"Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it—we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding."

"The opening of a foreign trade, by making them acquainted with new objects, or tempting them by the easier acquisition of things which they had not previously thought attainable, sometimes works a sort of industrial revolution in a country whose resources were previously undeveloped for want of energy and ambition in the people; inducing those who were satisfied with scanty comforts and little work to work harder for the gratification of their new tastes, and even to save, and accumulate capital, for the still more complete satisfaction of those tastes at a future time."

"There is no machine or mechanism [as compared with the steam engine] in which the little the theorists have done is more useless. It arose, was improved and perfected by working mechanics—and by them only."

"La revolution industrielle est commencee en France."

"It seems to me that the notion of machine that was current in the course of the Industrial Revolution – and which we might have inherited – is a notion, essentially, of a machine without goal, it had no goal ‘of’, it had a goal ‘for’. And this gradually developed into the notion of machines with goals ‘of’, like thermostats, which I might begin to object to because they might compete with me. Now we’ve got the notion of a machine with an underspecified goal, the system that evolves. This is a new notion, nothing like the notion of machines that was current in the Industrial Revolution, absolutely nothing like it. It is, if you like, a much more biological notion, maybe I’m wrong to call such a thing a machine; I gave that label to it because I like to realise things as artifacts, but you might not call the system a machine, you might call it something else."

"The Industrial Revolution was a watershed in the history of mankind. Three forces – technology, economic organization, and science, in this sequence – each from separate and undistinguished parentage, linked up, inconspicuously at first, to form, hardly a hundred years ago, into a social maelstrom that is still engulfing new and new millions of people, in an irresistible rush."

"What is the end of all the magnificent means provided by the productive activity of American society? Have not the means swallowed the ends, and does not the unrestricted production of means indicate the absence of ends? Even many born Americans are today inclined to answer the last question affirmatively. But there is more involved in the production of means. It is not the tools and gadgets that are the telos, the inner aim of production; it is the production itself. The means are more than means; they are felt as creations, as symbols of the infinite possibilities implied in man’s productivity. Being-itself is essentially productive."

"Bitcoin is meant to be this wonderful freeing thing. It’s a load of old nonsense; think of the power it takes to drive, to replicate, all those transactions globally. I just think it’s crazy, on energy usage alone."

"Bitcoin may be the TCP/IP of money. This is a statement that highlights the transformative potential of Bitcoin Price in the financial world. Just as TCP/IP laid the foundation for the internet's widespread adoption, Bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the global financial system. With its decentralized, secure, and transparent nature, Bitcoin has opened doors to a new era of digital finance, challenging traditional banking systems and offering greater financial inclusion for individuals worldwide. As more industries recognize its value, Bitcoin's impact on the world of money is akin to what TCP/IP achieved for the world of communication and information exchange."

"I knew there would be a question on Bitcoin or cryptos ... I've watched these politicians dodge questions all the time ... and I've always found it kind of disgusting ... But, the truth is — I'm going to dodge that question — because we've probably got hundreds of thousands people watching this that own Bitcoin — and we've probably got two people that are short. So we've got a choice of making four hundred thousand people mad at us and unhappy ... or making two people happy. And, that's just a dumb equation. ... We have a governor one time in Nebraska .. long time ago .. he would get a tough question about property taxes .. or what should we do about schools ... and he'd look right at the person and say, "I'm all right on that one!" And he'd just walk off. Well, I'm all right on that one and we'll see how Charlie is."

"[bitcoin is] probably rat poison squared."

"it doesn't produce anything, [If] you offer me 1% of all the apartment houses in the country and you want [...] $25 billion, I'll write you a check, it's very simple. Now if you told me you own all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25 I wouldn't take it because what would I do with it? I'd have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn't going to do anything. The apartments are going to produce rent and the farms are going to produce food."

"I've always been deeply opposed to crypto, bitcoin, etc. You pointed out the only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers, money laundering, tax avoidance. .... If I was the government, I’d close it down."

"Bitcoin is getting there. But it’s not there yet. When it gets there, expect governments to panic and society to be reshaped into something where governments cannot rely on taxing income nor wealth for running their operations."

"Bitcoin represents a significant threat to the currency domination of the USA, which is the only thing propping up the nation’s status as a worldwide superpower."

"I think it's [Bitcoin] a technical tour de force, but that's an area where governments are gonna maintain a dominant role."

"I'm a big fan of Bitcoin."

"It will be everywhere and the world will have to readjust. World governments will have to readjust."

"In my life, I try and avoid things that are stupid and evil and make me look bad in comparison to somebody else – and bitcoin does all three"

"I understand the political ramifications of [bitcoin] and I think that government should stay out of them and they should be perfectly legal."

"Having alternative currencies is great, right, because, historically, government's had a monopoly on currency. &#8230; At the end of the day, why should only politicians—either directly or indirectly—control the currency? We can reduce transaction cost, provide an alternative, and—look, I don't know whether it'll be Bitcoin or not—but I think the concept of digital currencies is here to stay, and the fact that a politician would write to try to ban them in their infancy is just the wrong way to go about it. Let the market determine whether there's any value there or not. &#8230; If people are saying, "Look, we gotta ban Bitcoin because it's somewhat anonymous and anonymous transactions can occur," or "because it's possible for criminals to use it," all of those arguments can be used to say, "Just ban dollars." &#8230; The government doesn't need to "treat" it [Bitcoin] at all. &#8230; The government policy should be completely agnostic about what unit of exchange is used."

"Ethereum has vast potential, whereas Bitcoin won't ever do anything well beyond implementing a currency."

"Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative."

"I think there is a 20% chance that Bitcoin will become a huge, worldwide success."

"We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error"

"planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters"

"The importance of the culture industry in the spiritual constitution of the masses is no dispensation for reflection on its objective legitimation, its essential being, least of all by a science which thinks itself pragmatic."

"Modern industry is stated by some writers to have begun in 1738 when John Wyatt brought out a spinning machine. Others place the period as between 1750 and 1800, when the power loom and steam engine came into being. It was marked by the development of labor-saving machinery. It was brought about by the change from handicraft to manufacture."

"Decidedly the best application of art to industry is when a great many copies are made from an exceedingly good pattern."

"A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centres, and thus destroy the system... The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. We can not afford the destructive effect of competition."

"In the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single group in every developed country, and unionized industrial workers in mass-production industry (which was then dominant everywhere) had attained upper-middle-class income levels. They had extensive job security, pensions, long paid vacations, and comprehensive unemployment insurance or "lifetime employment." Above all, they had achieved political power... Thirty-five years later, in 1990, industrial workers and their unions were in retreat. They had become marginal in numbers. Whereas industrial workers who make or move things had accounted for two fifths of the American work force in the 1950s, they accounted for less than one fifth in the early 1990s--that is, for no more than they had accounted for in 1900, when their meteoric rise began... By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast."

"Big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries. It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class."

"Big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter."

"Big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom. It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions."

"Since the by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods."

"Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone."

"Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety."

"Industry, which needs young men who are healthy, tractable, unpretentious and, I would even say, full of illusions, often receives engineers who are tired out, weak in body, and less ready than one could wish to take modest jobs and work so hard that everything seems easy to them. I am convinced that they could begin practical work much earlier and just as well prepared, by leaving things which are not used in practice out of their school education."

"God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. ... If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts."

"Advancement of the human factor in industry... varies so much that unless we use measurement and abide by the results, there is no possibility of repeating the process accurately and efficiently at will, or of predicting and controlling the future conditions that assure that advancement."

"“In industrial network communications, urgent assistance is the highest form of priority.”"

"Industry is the vis motrix of husbandry, and therefore an ancient English writer observes, "that a single uncultivated acre is a real physical evil in any state.""

"There are no honest goods to buy or to sell; adulterated foods, shoddy manufacture of all that we wear, the underpaid labor and consumed life that make every garment a texture of falsehood, the hideous competitive war that slays its millions where swords and cannons slay their tens, all unite to baffle and mock the efforts of the awakened conscience at every turn, and make the industrial system seem like the triumph of hell and madness on the earth. Only by a sort of terrible daily denial of his spiritual self, a crucifixion of the principles by which he longs to organize his life, can a man wrest a stained and insecure livelihood from this terrible war for bread which we call industry."

"I don't think industrial civilization is worth the distortion of human nature and the meanness and the loss of contact with the earth that it entails."

"A Renaissance busied with psychology might perhaps have considered man’s faculty of action as worthy of investigation; a mediæval period, the strength of his faith, a classical period—in part at least—his capacity for happiness. Such traits have lost their value for the modern psychologist; they are not even regarded at all, and industry has remained as the only virtue—with its satellites, ambition and success—a conception of virtue which the Ancients would never have hesitated to relegate to the lowest of men, to pariahs and to slaves."

"Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?"

"There are many branches of manufacturing industry which greatly depend for their success upon the designer's art, and it is necessary that the industrial designer should possess a knowledge of the processes of the manufacture in which his designs will be utilized, as well as of the properties and capabilities of the material to which they will be applied."

"Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality."

"Broadly speaking, the object of industry is to set up economic ways and means of satisfying human wants and in so doing to reduce everything possible to routines requiring a minimum amount of human effort."

"All the time the principles upon which industry should be based are simple, however difficult it may be to apply them; and if they are overlooked it is not because they are difficult, but because they are elementary. They are simple because industry is simple."

"The purpose of industry is obvious. It is to supply man with things which are necessary, useful or beautiful, and thus to bring life to body or spirit. In so far as it is governed by this end, it is among the most important of human activities. In so far as it is diverted from it, it may be harmless, amusing, or even exhilarating to those who carry it on, but it possesses no more social significance than the orderly business of ants and bees, the strutting of peacocks, or the struggles of carnivorous animals over carrion."

"One of the uses of industry is to provide the wealth which may make possible better education."

"The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honors, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil."

"The major vehicle of for the transition to the capitalist mode of production was the of eighteenth - century England. In cloth production mercantile wealth was visibly transformed into capital, as it acquired the dual function of purchasing machines and raw materials, on the one hand, and buying human energy to power their operation on the other."

"Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve."

"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us."

"I read somewhere that the tallest buildings in a town reflect that society’s values; if so, this one screamed that money mattered and beauty didn’t."

"Dancing and architecture are the two primary and essential arts. The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite."

"I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit. To this container, this sculpture, the user brings his baggage, his program, and interacts with it to accommodate his needs. If he can't do that, I've failed."

"Life is chaotic, dangerous, and surprising. Buildings should reflect that."

"Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed."

"I knew, as everyone knows, that the easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place some one is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will mean sudden death. That's what attracts us to the man who paints the flagstaff on the tall building, or to the 'human fly' who scales the walls of the same building."

"There can be little doubt that in many ways the story of bridge building is the story of civilisation. By it we can readily measure an important part of a people’s progress."

"A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom."

"We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty."

"I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface."

"Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention."

"To be a man is to be responsible: to be ashamed of miseries you did not cause; to be proud of your comrades' victories; to be aware, when setting one stone, that you are building a world."

"I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."

"The concept of 'measurement' becomes so fuzzy on reflection that it is quite surprising to have it appearing in physical theory at the most fundamental level... does not any analysis of measurement require concepts more fundamental than measurement? And should not the fundamental theory be about these more fundamental concepts?"

"A final moral concerns terminology. Why did such serious people take so seriously axioms which now seem so arbitrary? I suspect that they were misled by the pernicious misuse of the word ‘measurement’ in contemporary theory. This word very strongly suggests the ascertaining of some preexisting property of some thing, any instrument involved playing a purely passive role. Quantum experiments are just not like that, as we learned especially from Bohr. The results have to be regarded as the joint product of ‘system’ and ‘apparatus,’ the complete experimental set-up."

"The theory of communication is partly concerned with the measurement of information content of signals, as their essential property in the establishment of communication links. But the information content of signals is not to be regarded as a commodity; it is more a property or potential of the signals, and as a concept it is closely related to the idea of selection, or discrimination. This mathematical theory first arose in telegraphy and telephony, being developed for the purpose of measuring the information content of telecommunication signals. It concerned only the signals themselves as transmitted along wires, or broadcast through the aether, and is quite abstracted from all questions of "meaning." Nor does it concern the importance, the value, or truth to any particular person. As a theory, it lies at the syntactic level of sign theory and is abstracted from the semantic and pragmatic levels. We shall argue … that, though the theory does not directly involve biological elements, it is nevertheless quite basic to the study of human communication — basic but insufficient."

"It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth."

"You can't control what you can't measure"

"Since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art."

"There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery."

"It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life."

"Advancement of the human factor in industry... varies so much that unless we use measurement and abide by the results, there is no possibility of repeating the process accurately and efficiently at will, or of predicting and controlling the future conditions that assure that advancement."

"Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it."

"The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa."

"Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor."

"If a measurement matters at all, it is because it must have some conceivable effect on decisions and behaviour. If we can't identify a decision that could be affected by a proposed measurement and how it could change those decisions, then the measurement simply has no value."

"Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing."

"I used to measure the heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. Although my mind was heaven-bound, the shadow of my body lies here."

"It is also very difficult to understand the effectiveness of our actions without measurements."

"The art of measuring brings the world into subjection to man."

"Computer science is an empirical discipline. [...] Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing the machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available. Each new program that is built is an experiment. It poses a question to nature, and its behavior offers clues to an answer."

"To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose."

"The ultimate measurement is effectiveness, not efficiency."

"Science and engineering are based on measurements and comparisons. Thus, we need rules about how things are measured and compared, and we need experiments to establish the units for those measurements and comparisons. One purpose of physics (and engineering) is to design and conduct those experiments."

"As soon as we venture on the paths of the physicist, we learn to weigh and measure, to deal with time and space and mass and their related concepts, and to find more and more our knowledge expressed and our needs satisfied through the concept of number, as in the dreams of Plato and Pythagoras."

"INDUSTRIAL DESIGN is destined to become a universal language ; for in our material age of rapid transition, from abstract, to applied, Science — in the midst of our extraordinary tendency towards the perfection of the means of conversion, or manufacturing production — it must soon pass current in every land."

"In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely urging the manufacture."

"Mechanical engineering may be defined as the manufacture, installation, and repair of all kinds of machinery (including machine tools), prime movers and boilers, and engines."

"A wide market awaited the manufacturer of food products who would set purity and quality above everything else in their preparation."

"The two main purposes of mechanical engineering are: first, to design and make tools and equipment for turning out machinery required by all branches of engineering, industry, and commerce, and, second, to design and manufacture, by means of said tools and equipment."

"There are many branches of manufacturing industry which greatly depend for their success upon the designer's art, and it is necessary that the industrial designer should possess a knowledge of the processes of the manufacture in which his designs will be utilized, as well as of the properties and capabilities of the material to which they will be applied."

"We went through one of the big automobile factories to-day.... The foundry interested me particularly. The heat was terrific. The men seemed weary. Here manual labour is a drudgery and toil is slavery. The men cannot possibly find any satisfaction in their work. They simply work to make a living. Their sweat and their dull pain are part of the price paid for the fine cars we all run. And most of us run the cars without knowing what price is being paid for them.... We are all responsible. We all want the things which the factory produces and none of us is sensitive enough to care how much in human values the efficiency of the modern factory costs."

"What gradually swung the balance of resources back in the Allies' favour were two factors: the sheer speed and scale of American rearmament, which dwarfed anything that the Germans and Japanese, or even the British, had thought possible: and the swift revival of the Soviet economy after the mauling it received in 1941, when it sustained losses so severe that most pundits assumed the worst. Without the extraordinary exodus of Soviet machinery and labour from the war zones of the western Soviet Union to the harsh plains of Siberia, Stalin's armies would have been like the Tsar's in 1916, the soldiers in the second rank picking up the guns and boots of their dead vanguard as they scurried into battle. Against every expectation Soviet society worked feverishly to turn out the tanks and aircraft their soldiers needed. With only a quarter of the steel available to Germany, Soviet industry turned out more tanks, gun and planes than her German enemy throughout the war."

"The great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages."

"Mechanical engineering is applicable rather to works connected with private enterprise, such as the designing and construction of steam machinery for the purposes of navigation and transportation, the adaptation of such machinery to mills and factories, the construction of water-wheels, the fabrication of materials, iron, steel, and brass, for the purposes of the engineer, the architect, and manufacturer ; and the manufacture of implements and machinery for agriculture, for mining, and for domestic purposes."

"The desire to economize chocolate and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself."

"Some, of my unmathematical friends have incautiously urged me to dis-guard a note about the origin of modern calculating machines. This is the proper place to do so, as the Queen of queens has enslaved a few of these infernal things to do some of her more repulsive drudgery. What I shall say about these marvelous aids to the feeble human intelligence will be little indeed, for two reasons: I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly."

"If the variables are continuous, this definition [Ashby’s fundamental concept of machine] corresponds to the description of a dynamic system by a set of ordinary differential equations with time as the independent variable. However, such representation by differential equations is too restricted for a theory to include biological systems and calculating machines where discontinuities are ubiquitous."

"I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a kind of desiccated calculating-machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice, he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine."

"Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous."

"Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza."

"The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more. Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation."

"The needs of business, and the extensive market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced. With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population."

"The law is not a series of calculating machines where answers come tumbling out when the right levers are pushed."

"Let us look for a moment at the general significance of the fact that calculating machines actually exist, which relieve mathematicians of the purely mechanical part of numerical computations, and which accomplish the work more quickly and with a greater degree of accuracy; for the machine is not subject to the slips of the human calculator. The existence of such a machine proves that computation is not concerned with the significance of numbers, but that it is concerned essentially only with the formal laws of operation; for it is only these that the machine can obey—having been thus constructed—an intuitive perception of the significance of numbers being out of the question."

"More than a decade will pass before personal computers emerge from the garages of Silicon Valley, and a full thirty years before the Internet explosion of the 1990s. The word computer still has an ominous tone, conjuring up the image of a huge, intimidating device hidden away in an overlit, air-conditioned basement, relentlessly processing punch cards for some large institution: them. Yet, sitting in a non-descript office in McNamara's Pentagon, a quiet forty-seven-year-old civilian is already planning the revolution that will change forever the way computers are perceived. Somehow, the occupant of that office - a former MIT psychologist named J. C. R. Licklider - has seen a future in which computers will empower individuals, instead of forcing them into rigid conformity. He is almost alone in his conviction that computers can become not just superfast calculating machines, but joyful machines: tools that will serve as new media of expression, inspirations to creativity, and gateways to a vast world of online information. And now he is determined to use the Pentagon's money to make that vision a reality...."

"The arithmetical machine produces effects which approach nearer to thought than all the actions of animals. But it does nothing which would enable us to attribute will to it, as to the animals."

"There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage, and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind."

"In the early days of the computer revolution computer designers and numerical analysts worked closely together and indeed were often the same people. Now there is a regrettable tendency for numerical analysts to opt out of any responsibility for the design of the arithmetic facilities and a failure to influence the more basic features of software. It is often said that the use of computers for scientific work represents a small part of the market and numerical analysts have resigned themselves to accepting facilities "designed" for other purposes and making the best of them. [...] One of the main virtues of an electronic computer from the point of view of the numerical analyst is its ability to "do arithmetic fast." Need the arithmetic be so bad!"

"All that needed for its apprehension, more than the pure intellect, or required the exercise of fancy, imagination, affection, or faith, was distasteful to Cavendish. An intellectual head thinking, a pair of wonderfully acute eyes observing, and a pair of very skilful hands experimenting or recording, are all that I realise in reading his memorials. His brain seems to have been but a calculating engine; his eyes inlets of vision, not fountains of tears; his hands instruments of manipulation which never trembled with emotion, or were clasped together in adoration thanksgiving, or despair; his heart only an anatomical organ, necessary for of the circulation of the blood."

"AMSAT-OSCAR 7 was launched November 15, 1974 by a Delta 2310 launcher from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Lompoc, California. AO-7 was launched piggyback with ITOS-G (NOAA 4) and the Spanish INTASAT. and was the second Phase 2 satellite (Phase II-B)."

"If it weren't for satellites, we would have very little understanding of the biological activity of the entire Earth," said Josh Fisher, a climate scientist at JPL. "We know from our field studies about how different ecosystems [vary], but we don't know how robust or representative our studies are at the global scale."

"For years after World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union had been trying to perfect a long-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Building on the successes of Nazi Germany in developing the V-1 and V-2 rockets that pummeled Great Britain during the last months of World War II, both American and Russian scientists raced to improve the range and accuracy of such missiles. (Both nations relied heavily on captured German scientists in their efforts.) In July 1957, the United States seemed to win the race when the Atlas, an ICBM with a speed of up to 20,000 miles an hour and an effective range of 5,000 miles, was ready for testing. The test, however, was a disaster. The missile rose only about 5,000 feet into the air, tumbled, and plunged to earth. Just a month later, the Soviets claimed success by announcing that their own ICBM had been tested, had “covered a huge distance in a brief time,” and “landed in the target area.” No details were given in the Russian announcement and some commentators in the United States doubted that the ICBM test had been as successful as claimed. Nevertheless, the Soviet possession of this “ultimate weapon,” coupled with recent successful test by the Russians of atomic and hydrogen bombs, raised concerns in America. If the Soviets did indeed perfect their ICBM, no part of the United States would be completely safe from possible atomic attack. Less than two months later, the Soviets sent the satellite Sputnik into space."

"The other invention that was changing television was live satellite transmission. The first transmission from a satellite was the tape-recorded voice of President Dwight Eisenhower giving Christmas greetings on December 18, 1958. Early satellites, such as the “Early Bird,” were not geostationary—they did not maintain their position relative to the earth—and so could receive from any point on earth only at certain hours of the day. The satellite transmission of a major story required so many lucky coincidences that they rarely happened in the first few years. In those days, stories from Europe usually aired the next day in the States, after film could be flown in. The first story from Europe to be aired the same day on American television was not a satellite transmission. In 1961, when the Berlin Wall was first erected, the construction started so early in the day that with the time zone advantage, CBS was able to fly film to New York City in time for the evening news. President Kennedy complained that the half day it took to break the story on television had not allowed him enough time to formulate his response."

"Fred Friendly, the head of CBS news, understood that satellites, with instant transmissions, would eventually become accessible from most places in the world at any time of day and that this awkward invention would one day change the nature not only of television news, but of news itself. In 1965, he wanted a live satellite broadcast from somewhere in the world on the Cronkite evening news, which came on at 7:00 P.M. New York City time. Looking for a place in the world that could send to Early Bird at seven New York City time, he found Berlin, which had been a major story for several years. Schorr was placed at the Berlin Wall, always a good visual, and it was—live! Schorr’s entreaties that nothing was happening at the Wall in the middle of the night were useless. He was missing the point. The point was that it would be live. “So indeed, I stood there,” Schorr recounted. “This is the wall, behind here is where East Germany is, and all. And then, because we were there with lights on, you would hear dogs barking. Dogs started to bark and ‘you would hear dogs barking sometimes chasing some poor East German who was trying to escape. I don’t know that that is happening right now’—a lot of crap! But it was live.” CBS even talked a court in Germany that was trying an accused Nazi into holding a session after midnight so that it could be carried live rather than filming the normal day session and playing it that night. The age of live television news had begun."

"Some historians, at least, believe that spy satellites helped keep the Cold War cool. By providing planners with some information about what was going on behind the iron curtain, they kept the fever dreams of our decisionmakers in check. "At the height of the Cold War, our ability to receive this kind of technical intelligence was incredible," space historian Dwayne Day told the AP. "We needed to know what they were doing and where they were doing it, and in particular if they were preparing to invade Western Europe. Hexagon created a tremendous amount of stability because it meant American decision makers were not operating in the dark.""

"[The Hubble Space Telescope is] probably the most sophisticated scientific satellite ever built."

"In 1971 the CIA and Air Force began designing the Keyhole or KH series of spy satellites. On December 19, 1976, the first Keyhole was launched … Their resolution was so superior that license plate numbers on parked cars could be clearly read. Further, the satellites were used to photograph Soviet spacecraft in orbit and strategic bombers in flight."

""Already in 1945, we were talking about satellites," Yuri Mozhorin, a veteran of the Soviet rocket development program, told Popular Mechanics. Mozhorin's older colleague in rocketry, Mikhail Tikhonravov, even thought up a plan to fashion a piloted rocket ship out of the V-2 and launch it to the edge of space. Recently declassified documents reveal that Tikhonravov's bosses within the Soviet aviation industry took his plan seriously enough to send it right to the desk of Joseph Stalin in June 1946. But after a short flirtation with space flight, the Soviet military leadership focused on the V-2's more destructive capability. In fact, at the beginning of the 1950s, any talk of a satellite or space exploration inside the Soviet missile research centers could get you in serious trouble. All space dreams were considered subversive and distracting from the main overarching goal—the military missiles."

"…Korolev needed to go full speed ahead with the satellites development, so he stressed the potential military importance of the satellite. "With the help of the satellite… [it] will be possible to receive important data necessary for future development of science and military technology… it will be possible to conduct photo-reconnaissance of the (Earth's) surface…" he wrote in the Aug. 5, 1955, letter to the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev."

"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race."

"But you have one thing that may save you, and that is your youth. This is your great strength. It is also why I hate and fear you. Hear me out. It has been said that children are our future. But does that not also mean that we are their past? You are here to replace us. I don't understand why we're here helping and honoring them. You do not see union workers holding benefits for robots."

"Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Destroyed a thousand times, it has risen a thousand times out of its own ashes as hardy and vigorous as ever. Whenever there is long-continued mass unemployment, machines get the blame anew. This fallacy is still the basis of many labor union practices. The public tolerates these practices because it either believes at bottom that the unions are right, or is too confused to see just why they are wrong. The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat."

"Suppose a clothing manufacturer learns of a machine that will make men’s and women’s overcoats for half as much labor as previously. He installs the machines and drops half his labor force. This looks at first glance like a clear loss of employment. But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed. The manufacturer, how ever, would have adopted the machine only if it had either made better suits for half as much labor, or had made the same kind of suits at a smaller cost. If we assume the latter, we cannot assume that the amount of labor to make the machines was as great in terms of pay rolls as the amount of labor that the clothing manufacturer hopes to save in the long run by adopting the machine; otherwise there would have been no economy, and he would not have adopted it. So there is still a net loss of employment to be accounted for. But we should at least keep in mind the real possibility that even the first effect of the introduction of labor-saving machinery may be to increase employment on net balance; because it is usually only in the long run that the clothing manufacturer expects to save money by adopting the machine: it may take several years for the machine to “pay for itself.” After the machine has produced economies sufficient to offset its cost, the clothing manufacturer has more profits than before. (We shall assume that he merely sells his coats for the same price as his competitors, and makes no effort to undersell them.) At this point, it may seem, labor has suffered a net loss of employment, while it is only the manufacturer, the capitalist, who has gained. But it is precisely out of these extra profits that the subsequent social gains must come. The manufacturer must use these extra profits in at least one of three ways, and possibly he will use part of them in all three: (1) he will use the extra profits to expand his operations by buying more machines to make more coats; or (2) he will invest the extra profits in some other industry; or (3) he will spend the extra profits on increasing his own consumption. Whichever of these three courses he takes, he will increase employment."

"In brief, on net balance, machines, technological improvements, economies and efficiency do not throw men out of work."

"Obama: [M]ost people aren’t spending a lot of time right now worrying about singularity—they are worrying about “Well, is my job going to be replaced by a machine?” I tend to be on the optimistic side—historically we’ve absorbed new technologies, and people find that new jobs are created, they migrate, and our standards of living generally go up. I do think that we may be in a slightly different period now, simply because of the pervasive applicability of AI and other technologies. High-skill folks do very well in these systems. They can leverage their talents, they can interface with machines to extend their reach, their sales, their products and services. Low-wage, low-skill individuals become more and more redundant, and their jobs may not be replaced, but wages are suppressed. And if we are going to successfully manage this transition, we are going to have to have a societal conversation about how we manage this. How are we training and ensuring the economy is inclusive if, in fact, we are producing more than ever, but more and more of it is going to a small group at the top? How do we make sure that folks have a living income? And what does this mean in terms of us supporting things like the arts or culture or making sure our veterans are getting cared for? The social compact has to accommodate these new technologies, and our economic models have to accommodate them."

"Ito: It’s actually nonintuitive which jobs get displaced, because I would bet if you had a computer that understood the medical system, was very good at diagnostics and such, the nurse or the pharmacist is less likely than the doctor to be replaced—they are less expensive. There are actually very high-level jobs, things like lawyers or auditors, that might disappear. Whereas a lot of the service businesses, the arts, and occupations that computers aren’t well suited for won’t be replaced. I don’t know what you think about universal basic income, but as we start to see people getting displaced there’s also this idea that we can look at other models—like academia or the arts, where people have a purpose that isn’t tied directly to money. I think one of the problems is that there’s this general notion of, how can you be smart if you don’t have any money? In academia, I see a lot of smart people without money."

"LOCK-AND-KEY, n. The distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment."

"In essence, it [the report] says the world economy is breaking down and a continuation of current trends will lead to global chaos. . . . Double locks, armed guards and the fear of kidnapping and assassination are the new rewards for achievement almost everywhere ... War is often thought of in terms of military conflict or even annihilation. But there is a growing awareness that an equal danger might be chaos—as a result of mass hunger, economic disaster, environmental catastrophies and terrorism."

"To the angel of the congregation in Philadelphia write: These are the things he says who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens so that no one will shut and shuts so that no one opens."

"Modern industry is stated by some writers to have begun in 1738 when brought out a . Others place the period as between 1750 and 1800, when the and steam engine came into being. It was marked by the development of labor-saving machinery. It was brought about by the change from handicraft to manufacture."

"Iron and heat are, as we know, the supporters, the bases, of the mechanic arts. It is doubtful if there be in England a single industrial establishment of which the existence does not depend on the use of these agents, and which does not freely employ them. To take away to-day from England her steam-engines would be to take away at the same time her coal and iron. It would be to dry up all her sources of wealth, to ruin all on which her prosperity depends, in short, to annihilate that colossal power. The destruction of her navy, which she considers her strongest defence, would perhaps be less fatal."

"A blacksmith, Thomas Newcomen, in collaboration with a plumber, John Calley, produced the first commercially successful machine for "raising water by fire." Newcomen could not have based his design on prevailing scientific theory, White argued, because his engine relied on the dissolution of air in steam, and "scientists in his day were not aware that air dissolves in water." Evidently "the mastery of steam power" was a product of empirical science and was "not influenced by Galilean science.""

"The industrial revolution was well underway before the steam-engine came into use for driving machinery. Only two prime-movers—the water wheel and the windmill—were widely available, and with very few exceptions these yielded no more than 10 h.p. and often less."

"Newcomen's invention was radically different from that of Savery or any other single person. Papin invented the cylinder and piston as a means for transforming energy into motion. At first he used the explosive force of gunpowder, and later the use of the expansive force of steam, to raise the piston, and then by removing the fire to cause it to fall again. He made no further use of this principle. Savery discovered that the sudden condensation of steam made a vacuum that he utilized to draw up water. His pumps were actually used to drain mines, but were never satisfactory. They had to be placed within the mine to be drained, not over forty feet from the bottom, and then could be used to force up water an additional height of perhaps 100 feet. Beyond this the process must be repeated. It will be noticed that the water to be forced came into direct contact with the steam, which was contained in a solid vessel. In addition tremendous pressures were necessary: as high as 1,200 pounds per square inch were secured, and with the materials for construction at hand frequent and disastrous explosions were the result. Newcomen used Papin's cylinder and piston, and Savery's principle of the condensation of steam to produce a vacuum. But unlike Papin he used the expansive force of steam to do his work, and unlike Savery he used a cylinder and piston actuated by alternate expansion and condensation of steam to transform heat into mechanical motion."

"At first [Newcomen] made a double cylinder, using the space between for condensing water. This was not very satisfactory. The vacuum was secured very slowly and imperfectly. In 1711 they attempted to erect an engine for draining a mine, but failed. The next year they succeeded... but it was slow and ineffective. To operate it, required two men and a boy. The boy's work was to alternately open and close the valves to the condensing water and to the boiler. One day the engine made two or three motions quickly and powerfully. Newcomen immediately examined the cylinder and found a small hole, through which a small jet from the water that was on top of the piston to make it steam tight, was spurting into the cylinder. He appreciated the significance... [and] dispensed with the outer water jacket and injected the water for condensation, through a small pipe in the bottom of the cylinder. It... increased the speed of the engine from eight to fifteen strokes a minute, besides getting the advantage of a good vacuum. In 1713 a pump was erected in , and the boy who was hired to open and shut the valves, in an effort to make his work easier, rigged up a contrivance of strings and levers that operated the valves from the motion of the working beam over head. This made the engine automatic and marked another stage in its evolution. This boy, Humphrey Potter... This valve motion was afterward improved by in 1718. This engine... continued to be until the days of Watt..."

"In science its main worth is temporary, as a stepping-stone to something beyond. Even the Principia, as Newton, with characteristic modesty entitled his great work, is truly but the beginning of a natural philosophy, and no more an ultimate work than Watt's steam-engine, or Arkwright's spinning-machine."

"If the Steam Engine be the most powerful instrument in the hands of man, to alter the face of the physical world, it operates, at the same time, as a powerful moral lever in forwarding the great cause of civilization. ...If ...we are now met to consider of placing a monument to the memory of Mr. Watt beside the monuments of those who fell in the splendid victories of the last war, let it not be said that there is no connexion between the services of this modest and unobtrusive benefactor of his country, and the triumphs of the heroes which those monuments are destined to commemorate. ...It has been often said, that many of the great discoveries in science are due to accident; but it was well remarked by [Humphry Davy]... that this cannot be the case with the principal discovery of Mr. Watt. ... Again, it has frequently happened that those philosophers, who have made brilliant and useful discoveries... have only been able to turn their discoveries to the purpose of averting evils threatening, and often destroying, the precarious tenure of human existence. Thus Franklin disarmed the thunderbolt, and conducted it innocuous through our buildings, and close to our fire-sides—thus Jenner stripped a loathsome and destructive disease of its virulence, and rendered it harmless of devastation—thus [Davy]... sent the safety lamp into our mines to save... their useful inhabitants from the awful explosion of the fire damp. But the discovery of Mr. Watt went further: he subdued and regulated the most terrific power in the universe,—that power which, by the joint operation of pressure and heat, probably produces those tremendous convulsions of the earth, which in a moment subvert whole cities, and almost change the face of the inhabited globe. This apparently ungovernable power Mr. Watt reduced to a state of such perfect organization and discipline... that it may now be safely manœuvred and brought into irresistible action—irresistible, but still regulated, measured, and ascertained—or lulled into the most complete and secure repose, at the will of man, and under the guidance of his feeble hand. Thus one man directs it into the bowels of the earth, to tear asunder its very elements, and bring to light its hidden treasures; another places it upon the surface of the waters, to control the winds of heaven, to stem the tides, to check the currents, and defy the waves of the ocean; a third, perhaps and a fourth, are destined to apply this mighty power to other purposes, still unthought of and unsuspected, but leading to consequences, possibly not less important than those which it has already produced. ... those benefits, conferred by Mr. Watt on the whole civilized world, have been most experienced by his own country, which owes a tribute of national gratitude to a man, who has thus honoured her by his genius, and promoted her well being by his discoveries."

"Dr. Denys Papin, a native of Blois, a man of great ingenuity, and of considerable acquirements as a philosopher, is considered by his countrymen to be the true inventor of the Steam Engine: a claim strongly contested by some English authors of eminence who have written on the subject,—but on grounds which appear to have been taken from very erroneous and prejudiced statements. It is due to Papin, to state, that no one, whose labours have produced so many important results, has in his writings shewn so little of the vanity and absurd enthusiasm proverbially characteristic of an inventor."

"My first essay at making a steam engine was when I was fifteen. I then made a real working; steam-engine, 1 3/4 diameter cylinder, and 8 in. stroke, which not only could act, but really did some useful work; for I made it grind the oil colours which my father required for his painting. Steam engine models, now so common, were exceedingly scarce in those days, and very difficult to be had; and as the demand for them arose, I found it both delightful and profitable to make them; as well as sectional models of steam engines, which I introduced for the purpose of exhibiting the movements of all the parts, both exterior and interior..."

"I have endeavoured to attain this end (viz. the production of a vacuum in the cylinder) in another way. As water has the property of elasticity, when converted into steam by heat, and afterwards of being so completely recondensed by cold, that there does not remain the least appearance of this elasticity, I have thought that it would not be difficult to work machines in which, by means of a moderate heat and at a small cost, water might produce that perfect vacuum which has vainly been sought by means of gunpowder."

"Turning a small surface of water into vapour by fire, applied to the bottom of the cylinder that contains it; which vapour forces up the plug (or piston) in the cylinder to a considerable height, and which, as the vapour condenses, (as the water cools when taken from the fire,) descends again by air's pressure, and is applied to raise water out of the mine."

"What I say here is not to give room for believing, that Mr. Savery, who has since published this invention at London, is not actually the inventor. I do not doubt that the same thought may have occurred to him, as well as to others, without having learnt it elsewhere."

"Present day knowledge of both the theory and the technique of steam engines has justified Watt in the principles which he laid down, which were that the greater the steam pressure and range of expansion, the greater will be the work obtained from a given weight of steam, and that the cylinder should be kept as hot as the steam which enters it. The main development of the steam engine since his time has consisted in an extension of the range of expansion and in an ever increasing degree of compounding. The separation of the condenser from the cylinder by Watt was followed by the division of the expansion into stages in separate cylinders, finally into four stages in the highest development of the reciprocating engine. The steam turbine carries this subdivision still further, the number of stages included in a reaction turbine of high efficiency being commonly sixty or more."

"Should the engine, to the apprehension of some, seem intricate and difficult to be worked, after all the description I have given of it in this book, yet I can, and do assure them, that the attending and working the engine is so far from being so, that it is familiar and easy to be learned by those of the meanest capacity, in a very little time; insomuch that I have boys of thirteen or fourteen years of age, who now attend and work it to perfection, and were taught to do it in a few days; and I have known some learn to work the engine in half an hour. We have a proverb, that interest never lies; and I am assured that you gentlemen of the mines and collieries, when you have once made this engine familiar in your works, and to yourselves and servants; not only the profit, but abundance of other advantages and conveniences which you will find to attend your works in the use thereof, will create in you a favourable opinion of the labours of Your real Friend and humble Servant, THOMAS SAVERY"

"I only just hint this to show what use this engine may be put to in working of mills, especially where coals are cheap. I have only this to urge, that water in its fall from any determinate height, has simply a force answerable and equal to the force that raises it."

"Amongst the several Engines which have been contriv'd for the raising of Water for the Supply of Houses and Gardens, none has been more justly surprising, than that for the raising of Water by Fire; the particular Contrivance and sole Invention of a Gentleman, with whom I had the Honour long since to be well acquainted; I mean, the ingenious Captain Savery, sometime since deceased, but then a most noted engineer, and one of the Commissioners of the Sick and Wounded. ...It was a considerable Time before this curious Person, who has been so great an Honour to his Country, could, (as he himself tells us) bring this his Design to Perfection, on account of the Aukwardness of the Workmen, who were necessarily to be imploy'd in the Affair; but at last he conquer'd all Difficulties, and procur'd a Recommendation of it from the Royal Society, in Transac. No. 252. and soon after, a Patent from the Crown, for the sole making this Engine; And I have heard him say my self, that the very first Time he play'd it, it was in a Potter's House at Lambeth, where, tho' it was a small Engine, yet it forc'd its Way thro' the Roof, and struck up the Tiles in a Manner that Surpris'd all the Spectators."

"The first machine of Papin was very similar to the gunpowder-engine... of Huyghens. In place of gunpowder, a small quantity of water is placed at the bottom of the cylinder, A; a fire is built beneath it, "the bottom being made of very thin metal," and the steam formed soon raises the piston, B, to the top where a latch, E, engaging a notch in latch engaging the piston rod, H, holds it up until it is desired that it shall drop. The fire being removed, the steam condenses, and a vacuum is formed below the piston, and the latch, E, being disengaged, the piston is driven down by the superincumbent atmosphere and raises the weight which has been, meantime, attached to a rope... passing from the piston rod over pulleys... The machine had a cylinder two and a half inches in diameter, and raised 60 pounds once a minute; and Papin calculated that a machine of a little more than two feet diameter of cylinder and of four feet stroke would raise 8,000 pounds four feet per minute—i.e., that it would yield about one horse-power."

"In June, 1699, Captain Savery exhibited a model of his engine before the Royal Society, and the experiments he made with it succeeded to their satisfaction. It consisted of a furnace and boiler B: from the latter, two pipes, provided with cocks C, proceeded to two steam vessels S, which had branch pipes from a descending main D, and also to a rising main pipe A: each pair of branch pipes had check] valves a, b to prevent the descent of the water raised by the condensation or by the force of steam. Only one vessel, S, is shown, the other being immediately behind it. One of the steam vessels being filled with steam, condensation was produced by projecting cold water, from a small cistern E, against the vessel; and into the partial vacuum made by that means, the water, by the pressure of the atmosphere, was forced up the descending main D, from a depth of about twenty feet; and on the steam being let into the vessels again, the valve b closed, and prevented the descent of the water, while the steam having acquired force in the boiler, its pressure caused the water to raise the valve a, and ascend to a height proportional to the excess of the elastic force of the steam above the pressure of the air."

"About the year 1761, or 1762, I tried some experiments on the force of steam in a Papin's digester, and formed a species of steam-engine by fixing upon it a syringe, one-third of an inch diameter, with a solid piston, and furnished also with a cock to admit the steam from the digester, or shut it off at pleasure, as well as to open a communication from the inside of the syringe to the open air, by which the steam contained in the syringe might escape. When the communication between the digester and syringe was opened, the steam entered the syringe, and by its action upon the piston raised a considerable weight (15 lbs.) with which it was loaded. When this was raised as high as was thought proper, the communication with the digester was shut, and that with the atmosphere opened; the steam then made its escape, and the weight descended. The operations were repeated, and, though in this experiment the cock was turned by hand, it was easy to see how it could be done by the machine itself, and to make it work with perfect regularity. But I soon relinquished the idea of constructing an engine upon its principle, from being sensible it would be liable to some of the objections against Savery's engine, viz., the danger of bursting the boiler, and the difficulty of making the joints tight, and also that a great part of the power of the steam would be lost, because no vacuum was formed to assist the descent of the piston. I, however, described this engine in the fourth article of the specification of my patent of 1769; and again in the specification of another patent in the year 1784, together with a mode of applying it to the moving of wheel-carriages."

"When once the idea of the separate condensation was started, all these improvements followed as corollaries in quick succession, so that in the course of one or two days the invention was thus far complete in my mind, and I immediately set about an experiment to verify it practically."

"Every day, there's another story about fiber-optic technology, 500 channels, video on demand,' says Greg Fairbanks, (Blockbuster's) chief financial officer. Those developments may someday allow viewers to choose from hundreds of movies that would be delivered to TVs over cable or phone lines at any time. That could eliminate the need for a trip to the video store — and, to hear some tell it, eliminate Blockbuster. 'But those stories just complicate our story."

"Prior to tape recording technology, most television programs were broadcast live with no recording or archiving. Film was used for some events and broadcasts, but it was expensive. This fundamentally changed the approach of television stations, enabling them to record shows, and also to archive and re-broadcast them as repeats. However, VCRs also shook up the entertainment industry in other ways. Actors and writers went on strike in 1985 over the percentage paid to them for work released on video. VCRs were also blamed for reducing movie theatre attendance and putting a damper on box-office takings over the 1985 summer season."

"In 1981, only 3% of Australian households (or 150,000 homes) had a VCR. That number rose quickly, and by 1993 80% of Australian households (4.5 million homes) had a VCR. One reason for the rapid uptake was the dramatic drop in price of VCR technology. In 1976, the average price of a VCR was A$4,684 (A$8,838 in today’s dollars). By 1993, the average price was less than 10% of the 1976 price, at A$446 (A$842 in today’s money). The number of movies available also skyrocketed, from a measly two films in 1978 to 33,000 titles in 1993."

"Countries which do not have the facilities and resources to produce films for theatrical release are using video format to reach their audiences. As shown in Table 6, Nigeria–with an average production of 1,000 movies per year –is the third largest producer in terms of volume. As a result of new technology and video production, the emergence of new film producers, such as Mauritius, has been possible. While the country did not produce any feature films before 2009, Mauritius increased its production from 19 to 30 films between 2010 and 2011."

"As one industry insider argued, "Saving Private Ryan suffers on [video] cassette. If you see it at home, you are by no means as impressed with it as you were in the movie theater. And Shakespeare in Love is a more intimate picture, it plays well on cassette. It may actually be enhanced by watching it at home."" In response, Dreamworks' marketing chief, Terry Press countered: "That goes to a larger issue. You're a member of the Motion Picture Academy, not the television video academy. These movies are meant to be seen in movie theaters, all of them. They're not meant to be stopped and started and paused when the phone rings or to feed the dog.""

"Every video I'm in, every magazine cover, they stretch you; they make you perfect. It's not real life."

"People want to watch whatever video they want to watch whenever they want to watch."

"I make videos."

"Blockbuster’s early value proposition when it opened its first store 25 years ago was relatively revolutionary, as it provided consumers local access to thousands of movie titles all in one place. It was by no means the first video rental company, but it achieved scale in a way no one else did, using its vast reach to dominate the video rental landscape and drive hundreds of local mom-and-pop video stores out of business. For many, Blockbuster provided the convenience of a one-stop shop for nearly any video title one would hope to watch. But over the years, viewers and viewing habits have changed in a way that made Blockbuster less relevant. It’s no longer enough to provide users with a way to get content from a store down the street; nowadays, they want access to that content in their living rooms. At first the mail, and then online video gave them that access."

"In a phenomenal growth spurt that has reshaped the $10-billion-a-year video business, Blockbuster has gone from 19 stores nationally to nearly 1,300 in three years...."

"When you see yourself on video, do you like what you see? I've yet to meet someone who says yes."

"When the first anime-genre videos were released in 1990-91 through mail order and direct sales to the comic-book fandom specialty stores, it was understood by this market that these were animated equivalents of movies like The Terminator and Die Hard, full of explosions, blood-'n-guts, adult dialogue, and often a brief risqué nude scene. Around 1994 the anime videos expanded into the major video mass-market chains and became accessible to the general public, which tends to assume automatically that all animated cartoons are safe for children. This resulted in the necessity for warning advisories on the video boxes such as "Contains violence and nudity;" "Contains brief nudity and mature situations. Parental discretion advised;" and, "Recommended for Mature Viewers." But these did not yet include explicit sexual titles."

"Japanese animated explicitly adult cartoons developed along with the general animated Direct-to-video market. The first Japanese Original Animated Video (OAV) title was a science-fiction drama, Dallos, released in December 1983. The third OAV release, on February 21, 1984, was Lolita Anime I: Yuki no Kurenai Kesho * Shojo Bara Kei (freely translated, Crimson Cosmetic on the Snow * Young Girls' Rose Punishment). This half-hour video, first in the short-lived Wonder Kids erotic anime series, consisted of two 15-minute dramas of rape and sadistic sexual torture/murder of schoolgirls, whose spirits exact a gruesome supernatural vengeance. Of the seventeen OAVs released during 1984, six were "general" and eleven were pornographic. In 1985, after the viability of the direct-video market for action-adventure anime had been established, the total was 28 action-adventure titles to just another eleven porno titles. The Japanese domestic OAV market has grown accordingly, over the past decade, with 1997's output of 162 "general" titles and 62 erotic titles (including some multiple volumes of series) being about the average ratio."

"Beginning with the 1984 presidential campaign, the neoconservative Reagan administration and the Christian Right accelerated their use of television and video imagery to capture political discourse- and power. Along with a new series of "Ron and Nancy" commercials, the Reverend Pat Robertson's "700 Club" (a kind of right-wing talk show), and a resurgence of Good versus Evil kiddie cartoons, American television and video viewers were bombarded with the newest "pro life" propaganda piece, The Silent Scream. The Silent Scream marked a dramatic shift in the contest over abortion imagery. With formidable cunning, it translated the still and by-now stale images of fetus as "baby" into real-time video, thus (1) giving those images an immediate interface with the electronic media; (2) transforming antiabortion rhetoric from a mainly religious/mystical to a medical/technological mode; and (3) bringing the fetal image "to life. "On major network television the fetus rose to instant stardom, as The Silent Scream and its impresario, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, were aired at least five different times in one month, and one well-known reporter, holding up a fetus in a jar before 10 million viewers, announced: "This thing being aborted, this potential person, sure looks like a baby! This statement is more than just propaganda; it encapsulates the "politics of style" dominating late capitalist culture, transforming "surface impressions" into the "whole message." The cult of appearances not only is the defining characteristic of national politics in the United States, but it is also nourished by the language and techniques of photo/video imagery. Aware of cultural trends, the current leadership of the antiabortion movement has made a conscious strategic shift from religious discourses and authorities to medicotechnical ones, in its effort to win over the courts, the legislatures, and popular hearts and minds. But the vehicle for this shift is not organized medicine directly but mass culture and its diffusion into reproductive technology through the video display terminal."

"All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value."

"Just as the spinning and gathering of wool serve as the raw material for a weave, so the artist working with video selects images to serve as the basic substance of the work. All technology, in its capacity to instantly reproduce, store, and retrieve information, has moved continually in a direction that seeks to free us from laboring with our hands by giving us greater conceptual freedom to organize, select, and judge."

"Video killed the radio star."

"When I started in video I was one of two or three dozen video artists in 1970. And now, to paraphrase Andy Warhol, everyone's a video artist. Video, through your cellphone and camcorder, has become a form of speech, and speech is not James Joyce. It's great, and to be celebrated, but it has to find its own level."

"The launch of cable television redefined television in the 1980s. While there was an obvious audience for 24-hour news and movies, making CNN and HBO almost sure-things from launch, music videos weren't looked upon as having much value at all. When MTV launched with cheap music videos, nobody anticipated that it would revolutionise entertainment."

"Music videos were in short supply at the beginning of the 80s, so MTV played whatever they could get their hands on. Many record companies in America didn’t believe in MTV and weren’t willing to provide music videos at their own cost. A bulk of the music videos MTV played came from Europe where record companies made short promotional films for their artists to be played on video jukeboxes - a popular new piece of technology at the time. With only 250 music videos being played over a 24-hour period, the early artists of MTV got a lot of exposure thanks to a combination of repetition and desperation."

"While a polemical argument in prose may reach tens of thousands of the usual suspects - formally educated people who like to follow such texts - the video version reached far beyond that audience."

"For all the power of video and film, I am not giving up my pen. I am just much more likely to try to link essays to webcasts or videos. The best way for these two media to move forward, to inform and make change, is in tandem; together they are more than the sum of their parts."

"By 1990, movies were either rented or sold at much more reasonable prices directly to consumers (known as sell-through). Video rentals reached a plateau, but video sell-through sales continued to grow. By 1992, the value of video sell-through sales exceeded the domestic theatrical box office for the first time. Home video caused a significant downward shift in the box office; for instance, the domestic box office represented 80% of studio revenues in 1980, but by 1992 it decreased to no more than 25%."

"The theory of communication is partly concerned with the measurement of information content of signals, as their essential property in the establishment of communication links. But the information content of signals is not to be regarded as a commodity; it is more a property or potential of the signals, and as a concept it is closely related to the idea of selection, or discrimination. This mathematical theory first arose in telegraphy and telephony, being developed for the purpose of measuring the information content of telecommunication signals. It concerned only the signals themselves as transmitted along wires, or broadcast through the aether, and is quite abstracted from all questions of "meaning." Nor does it concern the importance, the value, or truth to any particular person. As a theory, it lies at the syntactic level of sign theory and is abstracted from the semantic and pragmatic levels. We shall argue … that, though the theory does not directly involve biological elements, it is nevertheless quite basic to the study of human communication — basic but insufficient."

"In August 1858 President Buchanan exchanged greetings with Queen Victoria by means of the newly completed Atlantic cable. Commemorating that happy occasion, it is a pleasure to send best wishes to you on the one hundredth anniversary of the completion of the first Trans-Atlantic Cable. The development of international communications has brought the peoples of the world into close neighborhood. It is our hope that these means of communication will serve increasingly as a carrier of the message of peace for which we both work and pray."

"Advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere."

"We need to recognise that the entire information sector&mdash;from music to newspapers to telecoms to internet to semiconductors and anything in-between&mdash;has become subject to a gigantic market failure in slow motion. A market failure exists when market prices cannot reach a self-sustaining equilibrium. The market failure of the entire information sector is one of the fundamental trends of our time, with far-reaching long-term effects, and it is happening right in front of our eyes."

"Telecom was the golden goose which laid the golden egg. The Supreme Court ensured that the golden goose will never lay golden egg again for a little while."

"In the past, documentation has frequently been compared with librarianship, with some argument as to which comprehends the other. The field is more helpfully characterised if we take its scope to be all forms of document (i.e. any physical carrier of symbolic messages) and all aspects of their handling, from production to delivery. The document system then becomes very much wider than conventional librarianship – it includes publication and printing, distribution, some forms of telecommunication, analysis, storage, retrieval and delivery to the user."

"Information systems, at any level of complexity above that of speech, necessarily involve technologies such as printing, telecommunications, or computers. However, to information science technical potentialities and constraints are of importance mainly in that they affect the social relations concerned."

"Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance -- open, secret and classified documents -- but not limited to those."

"Cryptome is not trustworthy, and lies."

"Young: I have done architectural work for Scientologists in NYC. Also for Church of Christ Scientists, Opus Dei, Baptists, Episcopaleans, Atheists, Socialists, Black Panthers, 5 Percenters, Mafia, Muslims, Communists and so forth."

"John Young: I don't drink water. Why drink water when there is alcohol?"

"John Young: Human activity is built on tricking and being tricked. Those who don’t hoodwink are evil people up to no good. I certainly expect to be hoodwinked. I’ll do it, too."

"John Young: There are no secrets that shouldn’t be published."

"John Young to WikiLeaks: Fuck your cute hustle and disinformation campaign against legitimate dissent. Same old shit, working for the enemy."

"John Young: This redaction is some reputation-building shit and WikiLeaks is a coward for adopting this mode. They promised never to do that. And now they are doing that. And why? Because there is money in it and reputation in it, and they want to be part of the players."

"John Young: I’m a member of WikiLeaks. I’m an insider of WikiLeaks. I’m a devotee of WikiLeaks. I’m a critic of WikiLeaks. My current shtick is to pretend that I am an opponent of WikiLeaks."

"CRYPTOME: "Authorities may access these private flows illegally, through court order or both in the name of a national security state of emergency. Corporate compliance guides have become standard office manuals to instruct staff on how to cooperate with law- enforcement subpoenas that demand consumer data and metadata. What are the prospects for viable democratic practice when the private citizen is displaced from public space and reconstructed at national scale as a fictive cipher populating the government database or watch list? Your watchlisted selfie is an inherently corrupted file.""

"CRYPTOME "Nevertheless, Snowden evidently rejected more experimental modes of distribution by self-organizing multitudes in favor of what, in retrospect, appears to have turned out to be a cynical journalistic process of maximizing curatorial control over the goose named Exclusive Scoop in order to claim all her golden eggs – including full spectrum product tie-ins from publicity, celebrity, accolades and awards to movie rights and royalties. Cryptome recently obtained documents from the public record that reveal Greenwald's 2015 base salary at the non-profit The Intercept to be $490,000. This is hardly consistent with the acts of civic humility attributed to Cincinnati's.""

"We're totally untrustworthy. We may be a sting operation, we may be working for the Feds. If you trust us, you're stupid."

"Authority was the enemy. That's [my] psychological background."

"We'll put up anything that no one else wants to put up"

"My defense is, I don't know what these documents are."

"There's nothing that should be secret. Period."

"They say, 'Don't believe that, it's just standard fare. It's a ploy.' If you believe any of this, you don't understand how spies operate. They lie so much and run so many false operations and plant so many false agents. They expose their own agents so much - there's nothing you can do that they haven't already done. In fact, they hope you will do it. To muddy the waters."

"See, it's standard tradecraft in the spy world to be extremely cooperative to people who are expecting resistance. You just offer all possible help, and they just walk right into it. Did you really think I'd let you interview me, rather than me interview you? I'm plumbing your data. I've learned a lot about how Radar operates. I'm just doing the usual shit that agents do to recruit other agents."

"John Young: My mentor, Jean-Paul Sartre, said that imagination is the only thing you can trust."

"John Young: Facts are not a trustworthy source of knowledge."

"John Young: Cryptome is not an authoritative source. It’s a source of imaginatory material. Don’t trust Cryptome, we lie to you helplessly. Don’t believe anything you see there."

"John Young: Don’t send us stuff and think that we’ll protect you."

"Deborah Natsios: I think it's interesting looked at in terms of large technosystem theory, the NSA taken as a large technosystem, this operative being something of a prosthetic extension of hardware. Snowden being understood as a kind of cyborgian creature without any political intuition. There's a kind of shock now in the system, now that this piece of hardware has suddenly, you know, gone rogue. And a person of his status, his age, his youth, there seems to be an incredible bias about their having any political voice. It's a key threshold for him to have broken out of his little enclosure and committed the act of conscience. Presumably the cyborg has no conscience, they're just kind of artificially intelligenced. And that's why if he's to be a hero in the literary sense, it's based on this act of conscience argument that he's deploying."

"John Young: I don't acknowledge the power of the law."

"Gawker: In a post on Cryptome, you suggested the leak was a "wargame". Do you think that this might be an elaborate government test? Young: Well, it will certainly be used for that purpose. They're certainly watching the response to this. They not only run their own games, they watch other people's games. Some are fortuitous like this. Some are deliberate. Natsios: I like this notion of the spontaneously combusting war games scenario. It's not top-down driven, it's just erupts and you study it as a phenomenon and information emerges that wouldn't otherwise in the carefully scripted modeling scenario."

"Natsios: We are required by state laws as architects to police issues of public health, safety and welfare. This is in the name of the public good. From Cryptome's perspective, we are obliged as architects to police the police, if you will. We are obliged to dissent, as required for the public good."

"Natsios: We find that increasingly because of legal and financial pressures, institutionalized freedom of information groups become quite inflexible, not agile, not tactical enough."

"We prefer being independent agents: We prefer that agility, we prefer that daily lack of master-plan agitation, and not being limited by the annual report obligations upon freedom of information non-profits; we have no annual report."

"Young: Cryptome, aspiring to be a free public library, accepts that libraries are chock full of contaminated material, hoaxes, forgeries, propaganda."

"Young: Cypherpunk was completely different from anything that existed at the time. It was all about taking over the world by undermining institutions and authorities."

"Young: We're great advocates of plagiarism and stealing."

"Young: The reality is that there's big business in branding dissent and whistle-blowing."

"Natsios: Our collaboration started some time late in 1993. We went online in the Internet's early infancy, its seminal moments. Quite quickly we became involved in these new online environments and communities that were positioning themselves on the front line of the politics of information. John's involvement with the Cypherpunk Listserv was a transformative moment."

"Natsios:Architects are by and large engaged in a kind of ornamental politics—a telegenic, photogenic and glossy politics that is unerringly safe. They won't put their careers on the line, they won't be visited by the authorities, they won't be subpoenaed for a federal criminal trial—all of which has happened to us."

"Young: We wouldn't do this if we didn't want to piss people off."

"Young: If you watch all these hyperbolic agendas, Snowden, Wikileaks, Greenwald, they copy government. It's the same kind of hustle of the public where they pretend to be in opposition when they're in cahoots."

"@Cryptomeorg: Cryptome is a free library operated and funded by two independent scholars. Not herd corraling NGO, leak site or commercial media, maverick. (17 October 2015)"

"@Cryptomeorg: Hillary could be hit with complicity in scheduling the Bin Laden killing to re-elect Obama. (17 October 2015)"

"@Cryptomeorg: Question for Cryptome: "what do you do?" Might be glorified as counterintelligence but counter mirrors spy perfidy. (25 October 2015)"

"Michael Crowley:When I asked John Young if there was anything he wouldn't reveal on his site -- a fault in the President's Secret Service detail, for instance -- he said, "Well, I'm actually looking for that information right now.""

"Glenn Greenwald: John Young occasionally does some repellent and demented things - such as posting the home addresses of Laura Poitras, Bart Gellman and myself along with maps pointing to our homes."

"I have no idea how John figured out how to make a living," says Tony Schuman, another Urban Deadliner. "I remember times when the electricity was shut off in his apartment because he was so wrapped up in this stuff that he hadn't bothered to find paying work. We were eating rice and beans."

"If we combine the benefits of a human physiology maintained at the level of effectiveness possessed by our bodies when we were children (e.g., dechronification), along with the ability to deal with almost any form of severe trauma (via nanosurgery), then there are very few diseases or conditions that cannot be cured using nanomedicine. The only major class of incurable illness which nanorobots can’t handle is the case of brain damage in which portions of your brain have been physically destroyed. This condition might not be reversible if unique information has been irrevocably lost (say, because you neglected to make a backup copy of this information). There are several other minor “incurable” conditions, but all of these similarly relate to the loss of unique information."

"Nanorobots constructed of diamondoid materials cannot be destroyed by our immune system. They can be made to be essentially impervious to chemical attack. However, the body may react to their presence in a way that may interfere with their function. This raises the issue of nanorobot biocompatibility."

"The key issue for enabling full-immersion reality is obtaining the necessary bandwidth inside the body, which should be available using the in vivo fiber network I first proposed in Nanomedicine, Vol. I (1999). Such a network can handle 1018 bits/sec of data traffic, capacious enough for real-time brain-state monitoring. The fiber network has a 30 cm3 volume and generates 4-6 watts waste heat, both small enough for safe installation in a 1400 cm3 25-watt human brain. Signals travel at most a few meters at nearly the speed of light, so transit time from signal origination at neuron sites inside the brain to the external computer system mediating the upload are ~0.00001 millisec which is considerably less than the minimum ~5 millisec neuron discharge cycle time. Neuron-monitoring chemical sensors located on average ~2 microns apart can capture relevant chemical events occurring within a ~5 millisec time window, since this is the approximate diffusion time for, say, a small neuropeptide across a 2-micron distance. Thus human brain state monitoring can probably be “instantaneous,” at least on the timescale of human neural response, in the sense of “nothing of significance was missed."

"It will probably not be possible to eradicate all infectious disease. The current bacterial population of Earth may be ~1031 organisms and so the chances are good that most of them are going to survive in some host reservoir, somewhere on the planet, for as long as life exists here, despite our best efforts to eradicate them. However, it should be possible to eliminate all harmful effects, and all harmful natural disease organisms, from the human body, allowing us to lead lives that are free of pathogen-mediated illness (at least most of the time). A simple antimicrobial nanorobot like the microbivore should be able to eliminate even the most severe bloodborne infections in treatment times on the order of an hour; more sophisticated devices could be used to tackle more difficult infection scenarios."

"Regarding microbial adaptability, it makes no difference if a bacterium has acquired multiple drug resistance to antibiotics or to any other traditional treatment – the microbivore will eat it anyway, achieving complete clearance of even the most severe septicemic infections in minutes to hours, as compared to weeks or even months for antibiotic-assisted natural phagocytic defenses, without increasing the risk of sepsis or septic shock. Hence microbivores, each 2-3 microns in size, appear to be up to ~1000 times faster-acting than either unaided natural or antibiotic-assisted biological phagocytic defenses, and can extend the doctor’s reach to the entire range of potential bacterial threats, including locally dense infections."

"Ames: The President's own vital signs -- heartbeat, brainwave pattern, blood pressure and so on -- are constantly monitored and relayed by his internal nanomachines. This information along with the DNA pattern serve as a biometric password, unbreakable even by the latest parallel processor supercomputers. The password entry itself cannot be performed unless brainwave patterns and heartbeats fall within normal parameters, rendering chemical and other forms of coercion impractical."

"Nastasha Romanenko: Solid Snake certainly managed to live up to his reputation. He adroitly wove his way through the enemy's patrols and infiltrated the nuclear weapons disposal plant, where he made contact with Donald Anderson, the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) director. Throughout the mission, we had radio monitoring capability over Snake's every movement thanks to his internal nanomachines."

"Nastasha Romanenko: What awaited Snake after his brief encounter with Liquid was Ocelot's KGB-tested 'interrogation' techniques. Ocelot apparently had no interest in extracting information, but rather appeared to be enjoying the acts of torture for their own sake. Snake's ragged gasps echoed from the radio in the silence of the control room. The heart rate and other physiological data transmitted by his nanomachines graphically demonstrated the extent of his suffering."

"La técnica no cumple los viejos sueños del hombre, sino los remeda con sorna."

"En lugar de humanizar la técnica el moderno prefiere tecnificar al hombre."

"La técnica ofrecería menos peligros si su manipuleo no le fuese tan fácil al imbécil y tan rentable al caco."

"In a society such as ours, it is almost impossible for a person to be responsible. A simple example: a dam has been built somewhere, and it bursts. Who is responsible for that? Geologists worked out. They examined the terrain. Engineers drew up the construction plans. Workmen constructed it. And the politicians decided that the dam had to be in that spot. Who is responsible? No one. There is never anyone responsible. Anywhere. In the whole of our technological society the work is so fragmented and broken up into small pieces that no one is responsible. But no one is free either. Everyone has his own, specific task. And that's all he has to do."

"As long as technique was represented by exclusively by the machine, it was possible to speak of “man and machine.” The machine remained an external object, and man (though significantly influenced by it in his professional, private, and psychic life) remained none the less independent. He was in a position to assert himself apart from the machine; he was able to adopt a position with respect to it."

"We may quote here Jacques Soustelle’s well-known remark of May, 1960, in reference to the atomic bomb. ... “Since it was possible, it was necessary.” Really a master phrase for all technical evolution."

"No technique is possible when men are free. When technique enters into the realm of social life, it collides ceaselessly with the human being to the degree that the combination of man and technique is unavoidable, and that technical action necessarily results in a determined result. Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being. For technique, this is a matter of life or death. Technique must reduce man to a technical animal, the king of the slaves of technique. Human caprice crumbles before this necessity; there can be no human autonomy in the face of technical autonomy. The individual must be fashioned by techniques, either negatively (by the techniques of understanding man) or positively (by the adaptation of man to the technical framework), in order to wipe out the blots his personal determination introduces into the perfect design of the organization."

"Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it."

"Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."

"The technologist's mania for putting the Creation to use, because he can't tolerate it as a partner, can't do anything with it; technology as the knack of eliminating the world as resistance, for example, of diluting by speed, so that we don't have to experience it."

"The normality of the world we live in is completely insane."

"In many places, above all in the Anglo-Saxon countries, logistics is today considered the only possible form of strict philosophy, because its result and procedures yield an assured profit for the construction of the technological universe. In America and elsewhere, logistics as the only proper philosophy of the future is thus beginning today to seize power over the intellectual world."

"Technology ... aims to produce neither concepts nor images, nor the joy of understanding, but method, exploitation of the labor of others, capital."

"Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power."

"The bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be."

"Many of our fellow citizens do not share the blind faith in the simple beneficence of all technological innovation. And because they do not share the corporealist, morally neutral, and in some cases atheistic world-view that they attribute (fairly or not) to science and scientists, they are reluctant to surrender the power of decision to the very people who they think are creating the problem."

"Could technology, understood as the disposition and activity of mastery, turn out to be a stumbling block in the path of the master himself?"

"The liberating force of technology—the instrumentalization of things—turns into ... the instrumentalization of man."

"Scientific and technological “solutions” which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their superficial attraction."

"The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one."

"No new choices are introduced by raising the specter of disaster. These become opportunities for swearing new allegiance to technology. The solution is to discover new technologies that will correct and modify the harm either potentially or already caused by present technologies."

"Today we have media … which actually specialize in the kind of obscenity which the cultivated, not the prurient, find repugnant. … It is contended that such material is the raw stuff of life, and that it is the duty of the organs of public information to leave no one deceived about the nature of the world. The assertion that this is the real world begs the most important question of all. The raw stuff of life is precisely what the civilized man desires to have refined, or presented in a humane framework, for which sentiment alone can afford the support. … One of the great conspiracies against philosophy and civilization, a conspiracy immensely aided by technology, is just this substitution of sensation for reflection."

"Fanaticism has been properly described as redoubling one’s effort after one’s aim has been forgotten, and this definition will serve as a good introduction to the fallacy of technology, which is the conclusion that because a thing can be done it must be done. The means absorb completely, and man becomes blind to the very concept of ends."

"Digitization is, in a way, a disruptive force, a disruptive technological force that brings about deep-seated change, transformation of a society. Look at the history of the printing press -- when this was invented, what sort of consequences this had. Or industrialization -- what sort of consequences that had. Very often it led to enormous transformational processes within individual societies, and it took a while until societies learned how to find the right kind of policies to contain this and to manage and steer this. And I think we live in a period of profound transformation, very similar to when we had a translation from agricultural societies to industrial societies."

"Colonel: In the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander. All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate. It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution. The digital society furthers human flaws, and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths."

"The solution is IBM."

"Recently, icdn's role as a willing accomplice in the mass murders of Gypsies — and indeed, the larger question of its Swiss operation — has come back to haunt the technology company. Big Blue has refused to answer the charges since the first simultaneous disclosures in 40 countries on February 11, 2001, that IBM knowingly systemized Hitler's persecution and extermination of Europe's Jews, directly from New York and through its subsidiaries in Europe coordinated through the Swiss office. But on June 22, a Swiss appellate Court ruled that a compensation suit filed by the Gypsy (Roma) (Roma) International Recognition and Compensation Action could proceed. "The precision, speed and reliability of IBM's machines," the Swiss judge ruled, "especially related to the censuses of the German population and racial biology by the Nazis, were praised in the publications of Dehomag itself, the branch of respondent IBM. It does not thus seem unreasonable to deduce that IBM's technical assistance facilitated the tasks of the Nazis in the commission of their crimes against humanity, acts also involving accountancy and classification by IBM machines and utilized in the concentration camps themselves." The judge's ruling pointedly added: "In view of the preceding, IBM's complicity with material and intellectual assistance in the criminal acts of the Nazis during the Second World War by means of its Geneva establishment does not appear to be ruled out, as there is a great deal of evidence indicating that the Geneva establishment was aware that it was aiding and supporting these acts.""

"IBM has consistently refused to allow access to its Swiss office files, pppp itself was some 60 years ago, Bukovinsky quipped, "So what. What is the point?""

"Fighting for your convictions can be a lonely business. But it's my observation that the people who get ahead in IBM are the ones who are willing to do just that. (1973)"

"The author convincingly shows the relentless efforts made by IBM to maximize profit by selling its machines and its punch cards to a country whose criminal record would soon be widely recognized. Indeed, Black demonstrates with great precision that the godlike owner of the corporation, Thomas Watson, was impervious to the moral dimension of his dealings with Hitler's Germany and for years even had a soft spot for the Nazi regime."

"All successful companies have good strategies. They all have good processes. They reward people for the right things. For the companies that truly break through, it comes down to their people. For us, it's not a question of talent. We have the best people in the industry. I knew that before I came to IBM, and I know it today, But are our people going to stretch to their potential - step up and lead? That's the real issue for IBM. What's really important is the personal commitment that each of us makes about how we're going to behave, how much we care, how much we're willing to give, how much we're willing to learn and adapt, what we think about every day that drives what we do operationally. It comes back to win, execute and team. Those are not slogans or even institutional values. They are personal commitments. They're not things of the head, they're things of the heart and the gut. They are behavioral, not intellectual. You do not get up every morning and salute them. You get up every morning and live them. We have completed, for the most part, the task of restructuring the institution. Our success now is going to be a function of personal behavior - the behavior of each and every one of us. (1998)"

"Around the time that IBM introduced the PC, a catch phrase in the industry was "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.""

"We encourage frankness in IBM; we encourage everyone to speak out. Let's make it a daily habit. (1972)"

"In recent years, there has been a widespread and growing public concern about the need to protect the individual's right to privacy. It is my belief that few issues will prove to be of greater significance to IBM. ... I am determined that we in IBM practice internally what we propose externally for out customers and the society generally. Accordingly, last year I asked for an intensive examination of our personnel practices to make sure that we are doing everything possible to protect the privacy of our own employees. That is a complex effort but it has been a fruitful one. While not complete, it has taken us a long way toward my personal goal of establishing IBM as the leader in employee privacy. (1974)"

"I know that IBMers everywhere are working harder than ever to meet heavy customer demand. But none of us is so important that our job and the company can't get along without us once in a while. The employee who chronically delays a vacation is not doing himself or anybody any good. He may be unknowingly tampering with his own health and well-being; and he is shortchanging his family. .... It's not how many miles you travel that matters. What counts is the distance you put between yourself and that daily routine. (1979)"

"There are many things I would like IBM to be known for, but no matter how big we become, I want this company to be known as the company which has the greatest respect for the individual. (1957)"

"We believe in the importance of the individual in IBM and we'll never forget it. We think it's more important than the most fantastic electronic product that we could ever invent. (1957)"

"Failure to delegate is the biggest single obstacle to job performance in IBM. (1959)"

"The employee relations of this company were founded long ago upon the Golden Rule and we expect all of our managers in working with their people to start with this fundamental. In keeping with this, we will continue to be sensitive to any personal problem which may temporarily affect an employee's performance. (1960)"

"The pursuit of perfection means not just enthusiasm for doing a topnotch job in important things, it means attention to detail and an itch to innovate and improve in whatever we have to do. It means to be dissatisfied with the status quo. ... We ought to know precisely why a given job is done in a particular way, and why it is done at all, and why it can't be done more effectively, if it must be done at all. This is the attitude that built our modern industrial society. It is the attitude that built IBM. I hope we never lose it. (1962)"

"Kierkegaard drew his point -- you can make wild ducks tame, but you can never make tame ducks wild again. One might also add that the duck who is tamed will never do anywhere any more. We are convinced that any business model needs its wild ducks. And in IBM we try not to tame them. (1963)"

"We accept out responsibilities as a corporate citizen in community, national and world affairs; we serve our interests best when we serve the public interest. We believe that the immediate and long-term public interest is best served in a system of competing enterprises. Therefore, we believe we should compete vigorously, but in a spirit of fair play, with respect to our competitors, and with respect for the law. In communities where IBM facilities are located, we do our utmost to create an environment in which people want to work and live. We agknowledge our obligation as a business to help improve the quality of the society we are part of. We want to be in the forefront of those companies which are working to make the world a better place. (1969)"

"The centre we have chosen is that of the cotton manufacture; a branch of commerce, the rapid and prodigious increase of which is, perhaps, absolutely unparalleled in the annals of trading nations."

"Cease from grinding, ye women who toil at the mill; sleep late, even if the crowing cocks announce the dawn. For has ordered the s to perform the work of your hands, and they, leaping down on top of the wheel, turn its axle which, with its revolving spokes, turns the heavy concave Nisyrian mill-stones. We taste again the joys of the primitive life, learning to feast on the products of Demeter without labour."

"The application of clay to the making of vases probably soon caused the invention of the potter's-wheel, before which period only vessels fashioned by the hand, and of rude unsymmetrical shape, could have been made. But the application of a circular lathe, laid horizontally and revolving on a central pivot, on which the clay was placed, and to which it adhered, was in its day a truly wonderful advance in the art. As the wheel spun round, all combinations of oval, spherical, and cylindrical forms could be produced, and the vases became not only symmetrical in their proportions, but true in their capacity. The invention of the wheel has been ascribed to all the great nations of antiquity. It is represented in full activity in the Egyptian sculptures; it is mentioned in the Scriptures, and was certainly in use at an early period in Assyria. The Greeks and Romans have attributed it to a Scythian philosopher, and to the States of Athens, Corinth, and Sicyon, the three great rivals in the ceramic art. The very oldest vases of Greece, some of which are supposed to have been made in the heroic ages, bear marks of having been turned upon the wheel. Indeed, it is not possible to find any Greek vases except those made by the wheel or by moulds; which latter process was applied only at a late period to their production."

"Although none of the very ancient kilns have survived the destructive influence of time, yet among all the great nations baked earthenware is of the highest antiquity. In Egypt, in the tombs of the first dynasties, vases and other remains of baked earthenware are abundantly found; and in and , the oldest bricks and tablets have passed through the furnace. ...The desire of rendering terra-cotta less porous, and of producing vases capable of retaining liquids, gave rise to the covering of it with a or glaze. The invention of glass has been hitherto generally attributed to the ns: but opaque glasses or enamels, as old as the XVIIIth dynasty, and enamelled objects as early as the IVth, have been found in Egypt. The employment of copper to produce a brilliant blue coloured enamel was very early both in Babylonia and Assyria; but the use of tin for a white enamel, as recently discovered in the enamelled bricks and vases of Babylonia and Assyria, anticipated by many centuries the rediscovery of that process in Europe in the 15th century, and shows the early application of metallic oxides. This invention apparently remained for many centuries a secret among the Eastern nations only, enamelled terra-cotta and glass forming articles of commercial export from Egypt and Phoenicia to every part of the Mediterranean. Among the Egyptians and Assyrians enamelling was used more frequently than glazing..."

"With the advent of metal tools in the and later in the the arts of wood-working became more precise and more specialized. ...By 2800 B.C. it could be said that a complete mastery over wood had been achieved in the most advanced civilizations. ... had been invented in Egypt where wood was scarce and plywood with six alternate layers of different varieties of wood was made. The plies were usually fastened together by wooden pegs. Twelve centuries later, in the Eighteenth Dynasty, veneering was practised and inlaying with ivory and ebony and overlaying with gold, silver and copper had been perfected. Nails were usually wood pegs but for delicate work minute metal nails were used. The for smoothing... was one of the principal tools of the carpenter, with a blade up to 18 in. wide, for the wood plane was not invented until Roman times. The increasing skill... is particularly evident in the wooden carts and s that have been discovered."

"To rob Britain of her steam engines would be to rob her of her coal and iron, to deprive her of her sources of wealth, to ruin her prosperity, to annihilate that collosal power."

"The hand-axe, made of sandstone, quartz, or lava as well as of flint, served mankind for at least a thousand centuries and spread over nearly one-fifth of the land-surface of the globe. ...With the development of the and the bow, man the technologist began to win his long struggle for human supremecy by matching skill against animal strength. ...the unevenness of technical development runs right through human development."

"The industrial revolution was well under way before the steam-engine came into general use... Only two prime-movers—the water-wheel and the —were widely available, and with very few exceptions these yielded no more than 10 h.p. and often less. ...In the late eighteenth and in the nineteenth century the efficiency of the water-wheel was considerably improved by theoretical and practical studies made by ... Among the numerous engineers influenced by his work was Joseph Glynn... Up to 1800 there were no steam-engines developing more than about 50 h.p. ...as late as 1835 the average power of steam-engines in Britain was only 15 h.p."

"It has sometimes been suggested that the wall paintings carried out by the hunters in southwestern France in caves during the Ice Age are unusual and represent a flowering of the arts which died... [However,] early farming communities ...frequently carried out quite elaborate paintings on the walls of their houses ...they appear to have decorated themselves as well, and we find small pestles and mortars used for grinding pigments in the making of cosmetics on many of their sites. ...[A] search had to be made for suitable pigments, and this ...led mankind to the ores of at least two metals. Yellow ocher or , and red ocher or , commonly known as jeweler's rouge, are both ores of iron, while the green mineral, , and the blue mineral, , are both ores of copper. But ...occasionally sizable lumps of copper are to be found among the ores of the metal. It is therefore more than a possibility that man's first interest in metallic copper was aroused while he was ...searching for a suitable green pigment..."

"Tradition has it that not only concerned himself with the unification of Egypt but also with the control of the river: to him is attributed the first damming of the Nile, the digging of dikes for agricultural purposes and indeed the first attempt to control and apportion the waters of the river. The wealth of Egypt was thus, with , based upon its agricultural output. However, unlike Mesopotamia, the Egyptians had on their doorstep a number of mineral resources that they were able to exploit with little effort, including copper ores, gold and a wide range of rocks suitable for building and the making of a wide variety of ornaments. [S]hortly before the year 3000 metallurgists made a discovery that was to transform the entire "industry." ...by mixing a small quantity of tin ore with the copper ores when... smelted... they discovered the alloy . The occurrence of tinstone... does not occur in the same type of deposit as do the ores of copper, but rather, [near] veins of gold. ...Thus tinstone ...may well have been noticed during washing for gold... finding that the little black lumps of ore were relatively heavy, presumably made various attempts at smelting them until they arrived empirically at a suitable alloy... [T]he effect is to reduce the melting point... they had a far more fluid metal that was much easier to cast. ...the quality of casting improved dramatically."

"If the steam engine be the most powerful instrument in the hands of man, to alter the face of the physical world, it operates, at the same time, as a powerful moral lever in forwarding the great cause of civilization. We cannot, therefore, recall... the invention through all its consequences, without feeling the beneficial influence of this discovery upon all nations, from those most advanced, to those which have made the least progress, in the arts and refinements of life."

"[M]ajor social disaster does not occur until there exist men isolated, by the advance of science or technics, and by the elaboration of social economy, from direct contact through hands and eyes and feet and noses, as well as minds, with the life of a soil community. ...[N]ot even the most arrogant of the Greeks had quite attained to [a] notion of inquiring into nature as if man stood god-like outside it. Galileo, Leeuwenhoek, Newton, were, in their methods, expressing the peculiarly Judeo-Christian idea that men were God's principal tenants, the rest of creation the fittings and stock let with the property. ...One of the last trades to which science, the method of inquiry into nature, but not living as a part of nature, was applied, was that of the farmer. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the disasters which ensued."

"The American pioneer peasants were not seizing made-land but virgin soil. Faced with a choice between park-land, forest and steppe, they naturally swarmed toward the latter, for it offered few natural obstacles to the , and seemed to have been made for just such a contingency as the sudden arrival of men far advanced in agricultural techniques. But land which, in semi-arid conditions and in a state of nature, offers few natural obstacles to the plough, is land which will not long stand ploughing; and ought not to be ploughed. The case of Oklahoma... [is] an example of men, considered as a disease of soil, reaching a mortal stage of virulence within half a century."

"The country and the period that witnessed the extraordinary growth of the cotton manufacture, the birth of the and the organization of the , witnessed also a parallel development in the iron industry. This simultaneous progress is a most interesting fact, for the two industries concerned are totally different. They have nothing in common either in their material or their essential processes; and their technical advancement had therefore to proceed by quite different methods. Only deep-lying causes could make them participate in one general evolution. Moreover, the changes in the textile and the metal-working industries are... mutually complementary, like the different parts of an organized body. The beginning of machine industry belong to the history of the textile trades, but its final triumph throughout the world was made possible only by the development of the metal industries."

"Babbage... had early conceived the notion he picturesquely called "the Engine eating its own tail" by which the results of the calculation appearing in the table column might be made to affect the other columns, and thus change the instructions set into the machine. ...[A]fter a striking mathematical digression into difference functions new to mathematics, and suggested only by the operation of the engine, he built ...a machine capable of carrying out any mathematical operation instead of only the simple routine of differences ...Such a machine would need instructions both by setting in initial numbers, as in the , and also far more generally by literally telling it what operations to carry out, and in what order. [The arithmetic unit was] capable of repeated additions, of multiplication which is hardly more than that, and of reversing the procedure for subraction and division... It would work on previously obtained intermediate results, stored in the memory section... or upon freshly found numbers. It could use auxiliary functions, logarithms, or similar tabular numbers, of which it would possess its own library. It could make judgements by comparing numbers... proceeding upon lines not uniquely specified in advance... carried out wholly mechanically. ...The operation depended upon punched cards... modeled on the already well-worked-out scheme of the . ...[T]he process was elaborately safeguarded against the perils of friction, jamming, and even errors of human attendants..."

"Thanks to the menial services of wind and water, a large intelligentsia could come into existence, and great works of art and scholarship and science and engineering could be created without recourse to slavery: a release of energy, a victory for the human spirit. Measuring gains not in horsepower originally used but in work finally accomplished, the eotechnic period compares favorably both with the epochs that preceded it and with the phases of mechanical civilization that followed it. When the textile industries attained an unheard of volume of production in the eighteenth century it was by means of water power, not the steam engine, that this was first achieved; and the first prime mover to exceed the poor five or ten per cent efficiency of the early steam engines was Fourneyron's water-turbine, a further development of the Baroque spoonwheel, perfected in 1832. By the middle of the nineteenth century water-turbines of 500 H.P. had been built. Plainly, the modern industrial revolution would have come into existence and gone on steadily had not a ton of coal been dug in England, and had not a new iron mine been opened."

"Glass... helped to alter the very concept of self. In a small way, glass had been used for mirrors by the Romans; but the background was a dark one, and the image was no more plain than... the polished metal surface. By the sixteenth century, even before the invention of plate glass that followed a hundred years later, the mechanical surface of the glass had been improved to such an extent that, by coating it with a silver amalgam, an excellent mirror could be created. ...For perhaps the first time, except for reflections in the water and in the dull surfaces of metal mirrors, it was possible to find an image that corresponded accurately to what others saw. ...The use of the mirror signalled the beginning of introspective biography in the modern style... The self in the mirror corresponds to the physical world that was brought to light by natural science in the same epoch: it was the self in abstracto... the more accurate the physical instrument, the more sufficient the light on it, the more relentlessly does it show the effects of age, disease, disappointment, slyness, covetousness, weakness... quite as clearly as health, joy and confidence. Indeed, when one is completely whole and at one with the world one does not need the mirror: it is in the period of psychic disintegration that the individual... turns to the lonely image to see what in fact is there and what he can hold on to; and it was in the period of cultural disintegration that men began to hold the mirror up to outer nature."

"In pursuing his experiments on the weight of the air, Pascal was led to inquire into the general laws of the equilibrium of fluids, and in the year 1653, he composed two treatises [De l'Equilibre des Liqueurs and De la Pesanteur de la Masse de l'Air] on that subject which were not published till 1663, the year after his death. In order to determine the general conditions of the equilibrium of fluids, Pascal supposes two inequal apertures to be made in a vessel filled with a fluid and closed on all sides. If two pistons are applied to these apertures, and pressed by forces proportional to the area of the apertures, the fluid will remain in equilibrio. But the most remarkable part... is his application of the general principle to the construction of what he calls the Mechanical Machine for multiplying forces, an effect which, he says, may be produced to any extent we choose, as one man may by means of this machine, raise a weight of any magnitude. This new machine is the Hydrostatic Press, first introduced by our celebrated countryman M. Bramah..."

"What if Roosevelt and Churchill had accepted the proposals from Bohr, Szilard, and others to internationalize the project? Would an with Russia still have resulted? The answer is probably yes. Bohr's idealistic concept was essentially a free exchange of information internationally. All nations would pool scientific knowledge, rather than keep it secret. An international body consisting mainly of scientists would oversee its exploitation. These ideas harked back to the free flow of information about physics in the fifty years before the Second World War, a period Bohr regarded as a golden age. However, not only times but nuclear physics had changed. Nuclear physics was by then perceived as having not only massive military potential but real commercial value for power generation. But these factors conferred great diplomatic, economic, and political power. For Stalin, possession of nuclear capability had immense importance, both symbolically and practically. Generation of electricity from nuclear power had the potential to achieve his long stated aim to "catch up and overtake" the West in terms of industrialization. Nuclear weapons would give him the ability to rule over his increasing empire in Eastern Europe, while allowing him to appear as, and to act as, the equal or the best of the West elsewhere. Western lack of trust in a totalitarian regime made a race inevitable."

"In 1895 the novelist Henry James acquired electric lighting; in 1896 he rode a bicycle; in 1897 he wrote on a typewriter; in 1898 he saw a . Within a very few years he could have had a Freudian analysis, traveled in an aircraft, understood the principles of the jet-engine or even space travel."

"[C]rafts—the development of techniques designed to serve human activity; and rituals—the attempt to control the powers of Nature, not only for comfort and convenience, but rather so that man shall live in harmony with the cosmic order... So far as we know, these represented the whole of man's understanding of the material world, until about the year 600 B.C. After that time, we find a parallel, intellectual tradition growing... with very different aims... eventually re-applied for practical ends..."

"The term Factory, in technology, designates the combined operation of many orders of work-people, adult and young, in tending with assiduous skill a system of productive machines continuously impelled by a central power. This definition includes such organizations as cotton-mills, flax-mills, silk-mills, woollen-mills, and certain engineering works; but it excludes those in which the mechanisms do not form a connected series, nor are dependent on one prime mover. Of the latter class, examples occur in iron-works, dye-works, soap-works, brass-foundries, &c. Some authors, indeed, have comprehended under the title factory, all extensive establishments wherein a number of people co-operate towards a common purpose of art; and would therefore rank breweries, distilleries, as well as the workshops of carpenters, turners, coopers, &c., under the factory system. But I conceive that this title, in its strictest sense, involves the idea of a vast automaton, composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the production of a common object, all of them being subordinated to a self-regulated moving force."

"Since, until recent centuries, technology was chiefly the concern of groups which wrote little, the role which technological development plays in human affairs has been neglected..."

"Of fundamental importance for the study of the physical properties of gases was the invention of the air-pump by , about the middle of the seventeenth century. ...The form of the instrument underwent a gradual evolution in his hands. The earlier types were of very simple design (see Illustr. [Fig. 1]). The first consisted of a cask well caulked with pitch and filled with water, which was evacuated by means of a brass pump having two valves. As the water was pumped out, however, the air was heard rushing through the pores of the wooden cask. A similar result was obtained when the cask was completely enclosed in a larger one, also containing water. Guericke accordingly gave up using wooden vessels, and attempted instead to evacuate a copper sphere from which he pumped out the air directly without previously filling it with water. ...[T]he sphere collapsed ...owing ...to the pressure of the external air, the vessel not having been made perfectly spherical. Guericke ...had another ...constructed ...and succeeded in obtaining a fairly high vacua. This must have been before 1654..."

"As the liberty lads o'er the sea Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood, So we, boys, we Shall die fighting or live free, And down with all kings but King Ludd!"

"The attack of the Luddites was not occasioned by the introduction of new machinery, however, as is commonly thought, for there is no evidence of such in 1811 and 1812 when Luddism proper began. Rather, the destruction was leveled at the new slip-shod methods which were ordered into effect on the extant machinery. Not an attack against production on economic grounds, it was above all the violent response of the textile workers (soon joined by others) to their attempted degradation in the form of inferior work; shoddy goods — the hastily-assembled "cut-ups," primarily — was the issue at hand."

"To wonder what was so radical about a movement which seemed to demand "only" the cessation of fraudulent work, is to fail to perceive the inner truth of the valid assumption, made on every side, of the connection between frame-breaking and sedition. As if the fight by the producer for the integrity of his work-life can be made without calling the whole of capitalism into question. The demand for the cessation of fraudulent work necessarily becomes a cataclysm, an all-or-nothing battle insofar as it is pursued; it leads directly to the heart of the capitalist relationship and its dynamic."

"A wonder of such nature I experienced as a child of 4 or 5 years, when my father showed me a compass. That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not at all fit into the nature of events, which could find a place in the unconscious world of concepts (effect connected with direct "touch"). I can still remember—or at least believe I can remember—that this experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things. What man sees before him from infancy causes no reaction of this kind; he is not surprised over the falling of bodies, concerning wind and rain, nor concerning the moon or about the fact that the moon does not fall down, nor concerning the differences between living and non-living matter."

"New carbon-sucking technologies ... are so far from scalability at present that they are best described as fantasies of industrial absolution."

"There are people here who want to just continue business as usual. And the great facade is: 'Oh no, we'll be able to [use carbon capture to] capture everything.' . . . No scientist tells me we can capture it all. Can't do it. Can we capture some? Yes, and by the way, I'm for it. [It's up to the oil and gas industry] to show us they can capture all those emissions, to tell us whether it's really going to be part of the future. But don't lie to people and tell them it's green. And don't pretend to people that that's the main alternative."

"Let tyrants shake their iron rod, and slavery clank her galling chains. We fear them not, we trust in God."

"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck."

"I am free! I have burst through my heavy chain, The life of young eagles is mine again!"

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!"

"At times we see and struggle with our chain, And dream that somewhat we are freed, in vain; The mighty fetters close on us again."

"If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave? If ye do not feel the chain, When it works a brother's pain, Are ye not base slaves indeed, Slaves unworthy to be freed?"

"True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear."

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them."

"[T]o be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains."

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

"Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them."

"I must cease the casting of my own chains. I must cease the binding of my body. I must break the chains that bind me. I must also create a new self, a new reality, a new sense of justice, a new fate."

"Arguments don't break chains."

"Der Mensch ist frei geschaffen, ist frei Und würd' er in Ketten geboren."

"The dog has been taught to pay attention; as long as he pays attention, he may escape his chain."

"Thanks to the recent advances in processing speed, data acquisition and storage, machine learning (ML) is penetrating every facet of our lives, and transforming research in many areas in a fundamental manner. Wireless communications is another success story — ubiquitous in our lives, from handheld devices to wearables, smart homes, and automobiles. While recent years have seen a flurry of research activity in exploiting ML tools for various wireless communication problems, the impact of these techniques in practical communication systems and standards is yet to be seen."

"The future trends are illustrated by two case studies. The first describes a recently developed method for dealing with reliability of decisions of classifiers, which seems to be promising for intelligent data analysis in medicine. The second describes an approach to using machine learning in order to verify some unexplained phenomena from complementary medicine, which is not (yet) approved by the orthodox medical community but could in the future play an important role in overall medical diagnosis and treatment."

"Machine learning can be broadly defined as computational methods using experience to improve performance or to make accurate predictions. Here, experience refers to the past information available to the learner, which typically takes the form of electronic data collected and made avalaible for analysis. This data could be in the form of digitized human-labeled training sets, or other types of information obtained via interactin with the environment. In all cases, its quality and size are crucial to the success of the predictions made by the learner."

"Years after Simons's team at Renaissance adopted machine-learning techniques, other quants have begun to embrace these methods. Renaissance anticipated a transformation in decision-making that's sweeping almost every business and walk of life. More companies and individuals are accepting and embracing models that continuously learn from their successes and failures. As investor Matthew Granade has noted, Amazon, Tencent, Netflix, and others that rely on dynamic, ever-changing models are emerging dominant. The more data that's fed to the machines, the smarter they're supposed to become."

"I didn’t pay attention to it at all, to be perfectly honest. Having been trained as a computer scientist in the 90s, everybody knew that AI didn’t work. People tried it, they tried neural nets and none of it worked. The revolution in deep nets has been very profound, it definitely surprised me, even though I was sitting right there."

"In deep learning, nothing is ever just about the equations. It is how you ... put them on the hardware, it’s a giant bag of black magic tricks that only very few people have truly mastered."

"The military played a significant role in the application of line telegraphy, not only in providing funds for development but also in testing the new ideas in the rigorous environment of military campaigns."

"Let me remind you that this great country was virtually created one hundred years ago by two inventions. Without them, the United States was impossible, with them, it was inevitable. Those inventions were, of course, the railroad and the electric telegraph. Today we are seeing, on a global scale, an almost exact parallel to that situation. What the railroads and the telegraph did here a century ago, the jets and communication satellites are doing now to all the world."

"... Few persons, probably, even among ornithologists realize what an enormous number of birds are killed by flying against these wires, which now form a murderous net-work over the greater part of the country. Until recently, I had myself no adequate idea of the destruction that is so quietly, insidiously, and uninterruptedly accomplished. My observations do not enable me to form even an approximate estimate of the annual mortality, and I suppose we shall never possess accurate data; but I am satisfied that many hundred thousand birds are yearly killed by the telegraph."

"Sir James Anderson and his crew on the ship Great Eastern attempted to lay down the second transatlantic cable in 1865, starting in the Irish island of Valentia. After about 1,062 miles of cable were laid down under the ocean, the cable snapped at the stern of the ship, halting the mission A second attempt was successfully made by the Great Eastern in the following year. On this journey, the crew also retrieved the lost end of the first cable and reconnected it to its original end. By the end of 1866, North America and Europe had two operating cables for telegraphic communications. Telegrams could be transmitted between North America and Europe at the average rate of 0.1 words per minute and at the cost of 10 dollars per page."

"In August 1858 President Buchanan exchanged greetings with Queen Victoria by means of the newly completed Atlantic cable. Commemorating that happy occasion, it is a pleasure to send best wishes to you on the one hundredth anniversary of the completion of the first Trans-Atlantic Cable. The development of international communications has brought the peoples of the world into close neighborhood. It is our hope that these means of communication will serve increasingly as a carrier of the message of peace for which we both work and pray."

"Outwards from London, Glasgow, Amsterdam and Hamburg there radiated the lines - shipping lines, railway lines, telegraph lines - that were the sinews of Western imperial power. Regular steamships connected the great commercial centres to every corner of the globe. They criss-crossed the oceans; they plied its great lakes; they chugged up and down its navigable rivers. At the ports where they loaded and unloaded their passengers and cargoes, there were railway stations, and from these emanated the second great network of the Victorian age: the iron rails, along which ran rhythmically, in accordance with scrupulously detailed timetables, a clunking cavalcade of steam trains. A third network, of copper and rubber rather than iron, enabled the rapid telegraphic communication of orders of all kinds: orders to be obeyed by imperial functionaries, orders to be filled by overseas merchants - even holy orders could use the telegraph to communicate with the thousands of missionaries earnestly disseminating West European creeds and ancillary beneficial knowledge to the heathen. These networks bound the world together as never before, seeming to 'annihilate distance' and thereby creating truly global markets for commodities, manufactures, labour and capital. In turn, it was these markets that peopled the prairies of the American Mid-West and the steppe of Siberia, grew rubber in Malaya and tea in Ceylon, bred sheep in Queensland and cattle in the pampas, dug diamonds from the pipes of Kimberley and gold from the rich seams of the Rand."

"Edison exhibited at the International Electrical Exhibition of Philadelphia an automatic telegraph for fac-simile transmission of despatches in Roman letters."

"If it be asked what telegraphic system is specifically announced as the most developed and extended throughout the world, the answer would seem to be definitely and summarily given in the proceedings of the International Telegraphic Convention held in Paris in March, 1865, composed of the representatives of twenty of the principal nations of Europe, assembled for the special purpose of examining the various projects, in order to adopt a uniform system, and to regulate international telegraphy for their common benefit. They thus decree in their third article; "L'appareil Morse reste provisoirement adopté pour le service des fils internationaux." Concise as is this announcement, as the result of their deliberations, it proclaims that the Morse system—an American system—is preferred for special international service throughout Europe."

"... Gauss and Weber developed an electrical two wires telegraph in 1833 for the synchronisation of observations and tested the transmission of words through an elaborate code (Stevens et al. 1838). Their scientific breakthrough led to the first commercial patent by Wheatstone in 1837 for a five wires telegraph leading immediately to the exploitation of lines between London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham along the new railroad network. This telegraph was using a code able to transmit 20 letters, the other ones having to be omitted. The continental testing of this system in 1840 involved the Director of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, Quetelet and Gauss. The scientific objective being network science coordinating magnetic observatories (Quetelet, 1840). Similar developments in the United States led Morse to design a stable telegraph with a coding system able to transmit many more characters which the US Supreme Court recognized in 1854 as the only patented telegraph system."

"During the voyage of the packet ship Sully from Havre to New York, in October, 1832, a conversation arose one day in the cabin upon electricity and magnetism. Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, described an experiment recently made in Paris with an electro-magnet, by means of which elec­tricity had been transmitted through a great length of wire, arranged in circles around the walls of a large apartment. The transmission had been instantaneous, and it seemed as though the flight of electricity was too rapid to be measured. Among the group of passengers no one listened more attentively to Dr. Jackson's recital than a New York artist, named Samuel Finley Breece Morse, who was returning from a three years' residence in Europe, whither he had gone for improve­ment in his art. ... "Why," said he, when the doctor had finished, "if that is so, and the presence of electricity could be made visible in any desired part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelli­gence might not be transmitted instantaneously by electric­ity." "How convenient it would be," added one of the passen­gers, "if we could send news in that manner." "Why can't we?" asked Morse, fascinated by the idea. From that hour the subject occupied his thoughts, and he began to exercise his Yankee ingenuity in devising the requisite apparatus."

"Every day the telegraph lines over the whole country cease work for a short time for the passage of a signal which is sent out from the Observatory at Greenwich exactly at 9 a.m. At the Observatory there is a Standard Clock, and that Standard Clock is the Earth itself. The sky is the dial. Its figures are the stars, and the line of sight of a telescope is the hand which points the hours."

"At this time ambassadors remained essential due to the slowness of communications. It could take a month for a letter to travel from London to St. Petersburg; in 1822 the record for an urgent dispatch to Vienna was one week. But in the 1840s and 1850s railways started to spread across the Continent, while steamships dramatically reduced the duration of sea voyages. After the introduction of the electric telegraph in the 1870s, ciphered telegrams replaced written dispatches for urgent business. Now that messages could be sent and answered within hours, the embassies in far-flung capitals could be subject to daily supervision. In 1904 the British diplomat Sir Francis Bertie complained that an ambassador had been reduced to the status of a “damned marionette,” with the Foreign Office pulling the wires."

"Tous ceux qui se sont occupés de l'application pratique de la télégraphie électrique s'accordent facilement sur ce point, savoir, que l'immense majorité des perturbations sont sujets aux télégraphes électriques proviennent des variations dans l'intensité des courants employés. La cause des variations réside, soit dans la source des courants, soit dans les conditions variables du circuit conducteur. La première de ces causes peut être éliminée en faisant usage de sources constantes. Je me contente d'observer à cet égard que je donne la préférence à la pile de Daniell."

"(All those who have been concerned with the practical application of electrical telegraphy readily agree on this point, namely, that the immense majority of the disturbances which affect electrical telegraphs arise from variations in the intensity of the currents employed. The cause of the variations lies either in the source of the currents or in the varying conditions of the conductor circuit. The first of these causes can be eliminated by making use of constant sources. I am content, in this regard, to observe that I give preference to the Daniell cell.)"

"... once, after I came to Fort Sedgwick, the wires were said to be "down," and no communication could be had with other posts in the upper country. It was feared that the Indians had been tampering with the wires, and torn them down. But the operators went out under an escort of soldiers to see what the difficulty was. They came back again in a couple of days, and reported that the Indians had not meddled with the wires at all. But it seemed that some buffaloes in a large drove had taken the privilege of scratching their rumps against the poles, and thus tore them down; and getting their horns entangled in the wires, the wild creatures had carried off about four miles of telegraph-wire!"

"Consider California. Its wealth was initially built on gold mines. But today it is built on silicon and celluloid - Silicon Valley and the celluloid hills of Hollywood."

"The décor was standard-issue Silicon Valley tech: industrial shag carpet, exposed ceilings revealing ventilation ducts and fire-retardant-covered steel beams, and the odd piece of home-brewed installation art: an imposing Lego wall featuring the blocky murals left by employees, another wall papered with the vaguely Orwellian posters the in-house printshop churned out."

"The chip industry gave the region a new name when Don Hoefler, a columnist for the weekly trade paper Electronic News, began a series in January 1971 entitled "Silicon Valley USA." The forty-mile Santa Clara Valley, which stretches from South San Francisco through Palo Alto to San Jose, has as its commercial backbone El Camino Real, the royal road that once connected California's twenty-one mission churches and is now a bustling avenue that connects companies and startups accounting for a third of the venture capital investment in the United States each year. "Growing up, I got inspired by the history of the place," Jobs said. "That made me want to a part of it.""

"Design came to Silicon Valley on the heels of engineering, and there were no reliable guides or even a clear sense of what it meant to "design" a variable attenuator or a helical-scan video recorder—much less of their relevance to the consumer market. Steinhilber reflected that "When I started out in the design field in New York most of our work was for the "white goods" industry (major appliances). When I moved to Ohio I had to learn the language of the machine-tool industry. But here was an infant field whose vocabulary was still in gestation. They were making it up as they went along." ... The first generation of practitioners approached this terra incognita on the basis of creativity, intuition, instinct, and taste, and they sought out inspiration from wherever they could find it: HP's Carl Clement traveled to MIT to experience "creative engineering"; Myron Stolaroff retreated to a cabin in the Sierra Nevada where he administered LSD to eight fellow Ampex engineers in an effort to unlock their latent creativity. At the Stanford Research Institute, computer pioneer Douglas Engelbart dabbled in the human potential movement and enrolled his unwitting staff in est seminars. ... With every new technological lurch the need for a more specialized set of professional skills became apparent, but also, paradoxically, for a wider vision."

"... I really do think, and not just because I happen to be writing a book about it, that the business of creating and foisting new technologies upon others that goes on in Silicon Valley is near the core of the American experience. The United States obviously occupies a strange place in the world. It is the capital of innovation, of material prosperity, of a certain kind of energy, of certain kinds of freedom, and of transience. Silicon Valley is to the United States what the United States is to the rest of the world. It is one of those places, unlike the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but like Las Vegas, that are unimaginable anywhere but in the United States."

"Ronald Reagan was right. The high-tech revolution was an only-in-America story. And he and so many others were right to laud people like Jobs and Gates and Hewlett and Packard as entrepreneurial heroes. Silicon Valley could never have come to be without the presence of visionary, audacious business leaders. Reagan and his conservative allies also were right when they argued that overly regulated markets and nationalized industries could present big hurdles to entrepreneurial markets—many of the globe's would-be Silicon Valleys attest to that. Yet, in its celebration of the free market, the individual entrepreneur, and the miracles of a wholly new economy, the Silicon Valley mythos left out some of the most interesting, unprecedented, and quintessentially America things about the modern tech industry. For these entrepreneurs were not lone cowboys, but very talented people whose success was made possible by the work of many other people, networks, and institutions."

"... I realize that my career at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (better known as Xerox PARC) has afforded me a much wider view of civilization. In particular, it has provided me with endless opportunities to meet with visitors from all parts of the world and in turn to visit nearly all parts of the world. Everyone takes Silicon Valley seriously now. With these visits, hardly a day goes by that I don't get asked to explain the magical brew that makes up Silicon Valley. What is it? What makes it so special? Can it be copied? If not, why not? And if yes, how? And what about that famous culture? What does it feel like to work for a large East Coast company and yet be a part of the Valley? Does this give me a different perspective—having to bridge those two quite different cultures daily? And how are those cultures different?"

"... I am always skeptical of copying things. ... Just like you shouldn't try to copy Microsoft or Facebook, copying Silicon Valley is probably also the wrong idea. ... One reason it's the wrong idea is that we don't even actually know what makes Silicon Valley work. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's non-compete agreements are not enforced in California. Maybe it is that there are these crazy network effects. ... All kinds of different explanations ... one can give. Even if we wanted to, I am not sure we know what makes it work. And then, I think, even more fundamentally when you are copying something, you are setting yourself up to be defined in a lesser way. If you are the Oxford of Iceland, that's not quite Oxford ... The something of somewhere is often the nothing of nowhere."

"In the Silicon Valley, there is the view that is widely shared in the world. And it is materialist and reductionist, for which the human being is a machine and reality is describable by the classical physics]] of objects moving in space-time. It is also the deception of today's artificial intelligence, which is more 'logo' to sell than the real thing. In this view, consciousness and experience are classified as simple phenomena that can be measured and described mathematically, when in fact they are not. This is why the current description of artificial intelligence is actually misleading."

"’If you must know, it's my thunderbox.’.. He..dragged out the treasure, a brass-bound, oak cube... On the inside of the lid was a plaque bearing the embossed title Connolly's Chemical Closet."

"With no mains water and no sewerage system, the bags are used as toilets. Flying latrines they are called, because when you have filled them, you throw them as far away as you can. And when the rains come and wash them out there is a good chance that some little boy or girl sent on an errand will see a bag in the street and use it again, to carry firewood or maybe food."

"Bertolucci’s eerie use of these oil paintings is the shocking story of an art exhibition that gripped Paris, established Bacon as the great European artist he had always dreamt of being – and left a man dead in a hotel toilet."

"Pecunia non olet (Money doesn’t stink)"

"Well, I took the crayfish home, and I thought he'd like a swim, So I filled up the chamber pot, and I threw the bugger in. By the way side high diddly aye do. In the middle of the night, I thought I'd have a fit, When my old lady got up to a-have a shit. By the way side high diddly aye do. Husband, husband, she cried out to me, The devil's in the chamber pot, and he's got hold of me. By the way side high diddly aye do. Children, children, bring the looking glass, Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's arse. By the way side high diddly aye do Children, children, did you hear the grunt, Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's cunt. By the way side high diddly aye do."

"Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?"

"On its own, even utopian VR can't transcend the limits of our genetically constrained "set-point" of well-being or ill-being. Ironically, a mass migration into virtual worlds may come to represent Peripheralism's final fling. Only total control of one's notional surroundings via immersive VR may be enough to convince the sceptic of the futility of purely environmental manipulation to secure lasting happiness. By contrast, the symbiosis of gradients of genetically preprogrammed euphoria and the application of mature virtual reality software engineering is an awesomely exciting prospect[.]"

"If you think you're plugged straight into the Real World, then the prospect of plugging in to silicon VR will seem like a retreat into fantasy-world escapism. On the other hand, if you've long ceased to believe that The World was yours to lose in the first place, then you may decide that nasty old organic VR is a world well lost."

"A virtual world is the content of a given medium. It may exist solely in the mind of its originator or be broadcast in such a way that it can be shared with others. A virtual world can exist without being displayed in a virtual reality system (i.e., an integrated collection of hardware, software, and content assembled for producing virtual reality experiences)–much like play or film scripts exist independently of specific instances of their performance. Such scripts do in fact describe virtual worlds. Let’s carry the analogy further. We can refer to the script of a play as merely the description of a play. When that description is brought to life via actors, stage sets, and music, we are experiencing the play’s virtual world. Similarly, a computer-based virtual world is the description of objects within a simulation. When we view that world via a system that brings those objects and interactions to us in a physically immersive, interactive presentation, we are experiencing it via virtual reality."

"“If human beings are the universe’s way of looking at itself,” Dr. Marx said, “then virtual reality is the universe’s way of pretending to look at itself.”"

"It turns out that the killer application for virtual reality is other human beings. Build a world that people want to inhabit, and the inhabitants will come."

"Already in 1874, Jules Verne in his novel The Mysterious Island, lets the engineer Cyrus Harding reply when asked what mankind will burn instead of coal, once it has been depleted: water decomposed into its primitive elements. ... and decomposed doubtless, by electricity ... Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Today's energy and transport system, which is based mainly on fossil fuels, can in no way be evaluated as sustainable. In the light of the projected increase of global energy demand, concerns over energy supply security, climate change, local air pollution and increasing prices of energy services are having a growing impact on policy making throughout the world. At present, oil, with a share of more than one third in the global primary energy mix, is still the largest primary fuel and covers more than 95% of the energy demand in the transport sector."

"The medium of energy transport from an atomic reactor to sites at which energy is required should not be electricity, but hydrogen. The term "hydrogen economy" applies to the energetic, ecological, and economic aspects of this concept. The concept envisages reactors held on platforms floating on water. They are in water sufficiently deep to make heat dissipation easy/ The electricity they make would be converted on site to hydrogen and oxygen by hydrolysis. The hydrogen would be piped to distribution stations and thereafter sent to factory and home. Reconversion to electricity would take place in on-site fuel cells, the only side product ebing pure water."

"While industry players have already started the market introduction of hydrogen fuel cell systems, including fuel cell electric vehicles and micro-combined heat and power devices, the use of hydrogen at grid scale requires the challenges of clean hydrogen production, bulk storage and distribution to be resolved. Ultimately, greater government support, in partnership with industry and academia, is still needed to realize hydrogen's potential across all economic sectors."

"Although in many ways hydrogen is an attractive replacement for fossil fuels, it does not occur in nature as the fuel H2. Rather, it occurs in chemical compounds like water or hydrocarbons that must be chemically transformed to yield H2. Hydrogen, like electricity, is a carrier of energy, and like electricity, it must be produced from a natural resource. At present, most of the world’s hydrogen is produced from natural gas by a process called steam reforming. However, producing hydrogen from fossil fuels would rob the hydrogen economy of much of its raison d’être: Steam reforming does not reduce the use of fossil fuels but rather shifts them from end use to an earlier production step; and it still releases carbon to the environment in the form of CO2. Thus, to achieve the benefits of the hydrogen economy, we must ultimately produce hydrogen from non-fossil resources, such as water, using a renewable energy source."

"Unlike CH4 and CO2, ammonia is not a greenhouse gas. In the atmosphere, it quickly forms hydrogen bonds to water vapor and returns to the ground in alkaline rain. However, NH3 is toxic, chills its surroundings rapidly on vaporizing, and releases heat on contact with water. Engineering a safe fuel tank for an ammonia-fueled vehicle would be a key priority. Ammonia is an excellent material for hydrogen storage. ... the volume density of hydrogen in liquid NH3 is more than 40% greater than in liquid H2, and the comparison becomes much more favorable when one considers the weight of the required fuel tank and peripherals. Unlike H2 gas, ammonia explodes in air only over a narrow range of concentrations. Shipping ammonia from production site to point-of-use does not require a great deal of cooling or high pressure. Thousands of miles of NH3 pipeline in the US stand as evidence that reliable infrastructure for NH3 transport and storage has been engineered. In sum, liquid NH3 is not just an excellent hydrogen-storage material but also an ideal medium for moving hydrogenic energy from place to place."

"One alternative to fossil fuels is ‘green’ hydrogen, which can be produced through water electrolysis by using an electric current to split water into hydrogen and oxygen with no greenhouse gas emissions, provided the electricity used to power the process is entirely from renewables. Hydrogen’s high mass energy density, light weight, and facile electrochemical conversion allow it to carry energy across geographical regions through pipelines or in the form of liquid fuels like ammonia on freight ships ... Across sectors as it can be used as a chemical feedstock, burned for heat, used as a reagent for synthetic fuel production, or converted back to electricity through fuel cells. Furthermore, hydrogen’s long-term energy storage capacity in tanks or underground caverns ... makes it one of the only green technologies that can store energy across seasons."

"There are three different primary energy-supply system classes which may be used to implement the hydrogen economy, namely, fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas, and as yet largely unused supplies such as shale oil, oil from tar sands, natural gas from geo-pressured locations, etc.), nuclear reactors including fission reactors and breeders or fusion nuclear reactors over the very long term, and renewable energy sources (including hydroelectric power systems, wind-energy systems, ocean thermal energy conversion systems, geothermal resources, and a host of direct solar energy-conversion systems including biomass production, photovoltaic energy conversion, solar thermal systems, etc.). Examination of present costs of hydrogen production by any of these means shows that the hydrogen economy favored by people searching for a non-polluting gaseous or liquid energy carrier will not be developed without new discoveries or innovations. Hydrogen may become an important market entry in a world with most of the electricity generated in nuclear fission or breeder reactors when high-temperature waste heat is used to dissociate water in chemical cycles or new inventions and innovations lead to low-cost hydrogen production by applying as yet uneconomical renewable solar techniques that are suitable for large-scale production such as direct water photolysis with suitably tailored band gaps on semiconductors or low-cost electricity supplies generated on ocean-based platforms using temperature differences in the tropical seas."

"Meanwhile, China has been slowly rolling out a digital version of its yuan, also inspired by bitcoin and crypto, in an attempt to both control the domestic flow of money among its citizens and compete with the U.S. dollar for global trade."

"[Cryptocurrency is] an asset, a commodity, and a store of value."

"In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending."

"Because imagine the combination of social media, the algorithms that drive social media, the amassing of even larger sums of money through the control of certain cryptocurrency chains -- we're looking at not only states such as China or Russia or others manipulating technology of all kinds to their advantage. We're looking at non-state actors, either in concert with states or on their own, destabilizing countries, destabilizing the dollar as the reserve currency."

"I've always been deeply opposed to crypto, bitcoin, etc. You pointed out the only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers, money laundering, tax avoidance. .... If I was the government, I’d close it down."

"The worst thing you can do is lay the wet blanket of government over this emerging area that frankly a lot of people are going to with or without government. Maybe that's the warning sign. This is going to happen. People are going to continue to move in this direction because cryptocurrency and everything that comes with it is a response to too much government."

"From the day I started digging into the crypto world, I had seen nothing but red flags. Why were all these companies based in infamous offshore regulatory havens? What was up with all these random virtual coins that were supposedly worth tens of billions of dollars? Was that, just maybe, a precarious foundation for the future of finance? Were they all scams? But by the time I visited Bankman-Fried’s island hideaway, the logic of the financial world had broken down. Hardly anyone knew what cryptocurrencies were for. Even supposed experts couldn’t explain them. It was unclear why many of the coins would be worth anything at all. But from 2020 to early 2022, the prices of Bitcoin and hundreds of other lesser coins—with ridiculous names like Dogecoin, Solana, Polkadot, and Smooth Love Potion—were going up and up. While I was in the Bahamas, people traded more than $500 billion worth of them, and the market value of all coins combined topped $2 trillion."

"Crypto boosters claimed they were in the vanguard of a revolution that would democratize finance and lead to generational wealth for those who believed. The roar of the rising prices drowned out the skeptics. Incomprehensible jargon became inescapable. Blockchain. DeFi. Web3. The metaverse. What these terms meant was beside the point. Newspapers, TV, and social media bombarded potential investors with stories of regular people who invested in them and got rich quick. None of this led to any sort of mass movement to actually use crypto in the real world. Nobody tossed their credit cards, closed their bank accounts, and abandoned the dollar or the euro in favor of, say, Cardano coins. But the hucksters, zealots, opportunists, and outright scammers who created the boom got unbelievably, unimaginably, impossibly rich."

"Bankman-Fried told me that as many as five of his colleagues at FTX were billionaires. And that was just a single crypto company. Many unprofitable start-ups with questionably legal business plans were valued in the billions. Changpeng Zhao, who founded another crypto exchange called Binance, made a fortune estimated at $96 billion. The numbers got so large that even the most delusional crypto fantasies started to sound reasonable. It seemed like nothing could stop crypto’s manic rise. Until, of course, the house of cards collapsed. Starting in the summer of 2022, many companies in crypto were revealed to be frauds. The bubble popped. About $2 trillion of market value was erased. Billionaires went bankrupt. Millions of ordinary people lost their savings. The financial authorities who’d allowed scammers to run rampant finally decided it was time to lay down the law. Bankman-Fried and many of his associates were arrested. Crypto didn’t disappear entirely, but the fever had broken."

"This is the story of the greatest financial mania the world has ever seen. It started as an investigation of a coin called Tether that served as a kind of bank for the industry. But it morphed into a two-year journey that would stretch from Manhattan to Miami, to Switzerland, Italy, the Bahamas, El Salvador, and the Philippines. It is based on hundreds of interviews with people at every level of crypto, from gamblers to coders to promoters to billionaires. I visited their yachts and parties at the pinnacle of the frenzy and their hideouts as the authorities were closing in. From the beginning, I thought that crypto was pretty dumb. And it turned out to be even dumber than I imagined. Never before has so much wealth been generated with such flimsy schemes. But what shocked me was not the vapidity of the crypto bros. It was how their heedlessness had devastating consequences for people across the world. By the end, I’d find myself in Cambodia, investigating how crypto fueled a vast human-trafficking scheme run by Chinese gangsters."

"Having alternative currencies is great, right, because, historically, government's had a monopoly on currency. … At the end of the day, why should only politicians—either directly or indirectly—control the currency? We can reduce transaction cost, provide an alternative, and—look, I don't know whether it'll be Bitcoin or not—but I think the concept of digital currencies is here to stay, and the fact that a politician would write to try to ban them in their infancy is just the wrong way to go about it. Let the market determine whether there's any value there or not. … If people are saying, "Look, we gotta ban Bitcoin because it's somewhat anonymous and anonymous transactions can occur," or "because it's possible for criminals to use it," all of those arguments can be used to say, "Just ban dollars." … The government doesn't need to "treat" it at all… The government policy should be completely agnostic about what unit of exchange is used."

"Cryptocurrencies have given rise to an entire new criminal industry, comprising unregulated offshore exchanges, paid propagandists, and an army of scammers looking to fleece retail investors. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of rampant fraud and abuse, financial regulators and law-enforcement agencies remain asleep at the wheel."

"The crypto bros are spending tens of millions in Washington to make sure this industry is regulated as lightly as possible, ... There are no lobbyists or PACs dedicated to preventing tax evasion, sanctions evasion, and the other forms of illicit finance that cryptocurrency enables,"

"planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters"

"Mankind has always recognized the importance of entertainment and its value in rebuilding the bodies and souls of human beings. But it has always recognized that entertainment can be of a character either helpful or harmful to the human race, and, in consequence, has clearly distinguished between: Entertainment which tends to improve the race, or, at least, to recreate and rebuild human being exhausted with the realities of life; and Entertainment which tends to degrade human beings, or to lower their standards of life and living. Hence the moral importance of entertainment is something which has been universally recognized. It enters intimately into the lives of men and women and affects them closely; it occupies their minds and affections during leisure hours, and ultimately touches the whole of their lives. A man may be judged by his standard of entertainment as easily as the standard of his work. So correct entertainment raises the whole standard of a nation. Wrong entertainment lowers the whole living condition and moral ideals of a race."

"Art enters intimately into the lives of human beings. Art can be morally good, lifting men to higher levels. <br This has been done thru good music, great painting, authentic fiction, poetry, drama. Art can be morally evil in its effects. This is the case clearly enough with unclean art, indecent books, suggestive drama. The effect on the lives of men and women is obvious."

"The motion pictures which are the most popular of modern arts for the masses, have their moral quality from the minds which produce them and from their effects on the moral lives and reactions of their audiences. This gives them a most important morality. (1) They reproduce the morality of the men who use the pictures as a medium for the expression of their ideas sand ideals. (2) They affect the moral standards of those who thru the screen take in these ideas and ideals. In the case of the motion pictures, this effect may be particularly emphasized because no art was so quick and so widespread an appeal to the masses. It has become in an incredibly short period, the art of the multitudes."

"The motion picture has special Moral obligations: (A) Most arts appeal to the mature. This art appeals at once to every class-mature, immature, developed, undeveloped, law abiding, criminal. Music has its grades for different classes; so has literature and drama. This art of the motion picture, combining as it does the two fundamental appeals of looking at a picture and listening to a story, at once reaches every class of society. (B) Because of the mobility of a film and the ease of picture distribution, and because of the possibility of duplicating positives in large quantities, this art reaches places unpenetrated by other forms of art."

"Psychologically, the larger the audience, the lower the moral mass resistance to suggestion."

"No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it. This is done: (a) When evil is made to appear attractive, and good is made to appear unattractive. (b) When the sympathy of the audience is thrown on the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil, sin. The same thing is true of a film that would throw sympathy against goodness, honor, innocence, purity, honesty."

"“Sympathy with a person who sins”, is not the same as sympathy with the sin or crime of which he is guilty. We may feel sorry for the plight of the murderer or even understand the circumstances which led him to his crime; we may not feel sympathy with the wrong which he has done. The presentation of evil is often essential for art, or fiction, or drama. This in itself is not wrong, provided: (a) That evil is not presented alluringly. Even if later the evil is condemned or punished, it must not be allowed to appear so attractive that the emotions are drawn to desire or approve so strongly that later they forget the condemnation and remember only the apparent joy of the sin. (b) That thru out the presentation, evil and good are never confused and that evil is always recognized clearly as evil. (c) That in the end the audience feels that evil is wrong and good is right."

"Law, natural or divine, must not be belittled, ridiculed, nor must a sentiment be created against it. (A) The presentation of crimes against the law, human or divine, is often necessary for the carrying out of the plot. But the presentation must not throw sympathy with the criminal as against the law, nor with the crime as against those who must punish it. (B) The courts of the land should not be presented as unjust. III. As far as possible, life should not be misrepresented, at least not in such a way as to place in the minds of youth false values on life."

"In accordance with the general principles laid down: (1) No plot theme should definitely side with evil and against good. (2) Comedies and farces should not make fun of good, innocence, morality or justice. (3) No plot should be so constructed as to leave the question of right or wrong in doubt or fogged. (4) No plot should by its treatment throw sympathy of the audience with sin, crime, wrong-doing or evil. (5) No plot should present evil alluringly."

"Vulgarity may be carefully distinguished from obscenity. Vulgarity is the treatment of low, disgusting, unpleasant subjects which decent society considers outlawed from normal conversation. Vulgarity in the motion pictures is limited in precisely the same way as in decent groups of men and women by the dictates of good taste and civilized usage, and by the effect of shock, scandal, and harm on those coming in contact with this vulgarity. (1) Oaths should never be used as a comedy element. Where required by the plot, the less offensive oaths may be permitted (2) Vulgar expressions come under the same treatment as vulgarity in general. Where women and children to see the film, vulgar expressions (and oaths) should be cut to the absolute essentials required by the situation. (3) The name of Jesus Christ should never be used except in reverence."

"Obscenity is concerned with immorality, but has the additional connotation of being common, vulgar and coarse. (1) Obscenity in fact, that is, in spoken word, gesture, episode, plot, is against divine and human law, and hence altogether outside the range of subject matter or treatment. (2) Obscenity should not be suggested by gesture, manner, etc., (3) An obscene reference, even if it is expected to be understandable to only the more sophisticated part o the audience, should not be introduced. (4) Obscene language is treated as all obscenity."

"Costume GENERAL PRINCIPLES (1) The effect of nudity or semi-nudity upon the normal man or woman, and much more upon the young person, has been honestly recognized by all law-makers and moralists. (2) Hence the fact that the nude or semi-nude body may be beautiful does not make its use in the films moral. For in addition to its beauty, the effect of the nude or semi-nude on the moral individual must be taken into consideration. <br (3) Nudity or semi-nudity used simply to put a “punch” into a picture comes under the head of immoral actions as treated above. It is immoral in its effect upon the average audience. (4) Nudity, or semi-nudity is sometimes apparently necessary for the plot. Nudity is never permitted. Semi-nudity may be permitted under conditions. PARTICULAR PRINCIPLES (1) The more intimate parts of the human body are the male and female organs and the breasts of a woman. (a) They should never be uncovered. (b) They should not be covered with transparent or translucent material. (c) They should not be clearly and unmistakably outlined by the garment."

"Dancing (1) Dancing in general is recognized as an art and a beautiful form of expressing human emotion. (2) Obscene dances are those: (a) Which suggest or represent sexual actions, whether performed solo or with two or more; (b) Which are designed to excite an audience, to arouse passions, or to cause physical excitement. HENCE: Dances of the type known as "Kooch" or "Can-Can," since they violate decency in these two ways, are wrong. Dances with movement of the breasts, excessive body movement while the feet remain stationary, the so-called "belly dances" these dances are immoral, obscene, and hence altogether wrong."

"In July of 1934 an editorial in The Commonweal, a semi-official organ of the Catholic church, declared that the “muck merchants” of Hollywood, that “fortress of filth” that had been destroying the moral fiber of the American people, had finally been brought to its knees by the Catholic church and its Legion of Decency. In less than a year the church had recruited millions of Americans of all religious denominations to pledge not to attend “immoral” movies. With a national depression already threatening Hollywood’s financial stability, movie czar Will Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of American (MPPDA), accepted the terms of surrender dictated by the church and its legions. The truce struck between Hays and the Most Reverend John T. McNicholas, Archbishop of Cincinnnati, and written and negotiated by Martin Quigley, publisher of “The Motion Picture Herald”, signaled a turning point in a 30-year battle among religious leaders, women’s groups, civic organizations, municipal and state censorship boards, and the motion picture industry over the content of Hollywood films. The victory took the form of a new agency inside the MPPDA, the industry's trade association. The Catholics demanded that Hays create Production Code Administration (PCA) to enforce the censorship code adopted by the industry in 1930. The code, written by a Catholic priest, had not, in the opinion of the church, been enforced. The church demanded, and Hays agreed, that a staunch lay Catholic, namely Joseph I. Breen, would head the PCA and interpret the code. To guarantee that Breen would have enforcement powers, the agreement forced every studio to submit scripts to the PCA before production. The studios agreed that no production would begin without script approval and that no film would be distributed with a PCA seal of approval. The MPPDA was given power to levy a $25,000 fine against any violator. But that was not all. The church demanded that Hollywood permanently withdraw from circulation films it viewed as “immoral” and that local theater owners be empowered to cancel any film currently in circulation if they judged it to be “immoral.”"

"… once a healthy cell sort of abandons ship and decides that it's going to just be, like, a ravenous, invasive cancer cell, its voltage changes radically. And what you can do with an ion channel drug is change the electrical state of that cell by messing with the ion channels. And in tadpole experiments — and this is early days, but this is moving really fast. In tadpole experiments, they were able to use ion channel drugs to keep cells that had been genetically engineered to be tumors from changing their electrical voltage, right? And without doing any kind of genetic mucking around, they kept these tumors from forming in tadpoles that had been genetically engineered to express tumors."

"The plasma membrane is a heterogeneous structure whose thickness ia around 75 Å and which bounds the cell. An important constituent is lipid, which often represents as much as 70% of the membrane volume (depending on cell type). The membrane lipid readily excludes the passage of ions; it remains for imbedded proteins to form the channels which permit exchange of ions between intracellular and extracellular space. For nerve and muscle, electrical activation is associated with the movement of sodium and potassium (and other) ions across membranes by means of these channels; the proteins not only facilitate the flow of each ion but they control the flow of each giving rise to the ' of the membrane."

"Waste biomass is a cheap and relatively abundant source of electrons for microbes capable of producing electrical current outside the cell. Rapidly developing microbial electrochemical technologies, such as microbial fuel cells, are part of a diverse platform of future sustainable energy and chemical production technologies. We review the key advances that will enable the use of exoelectrogenic microorganisms to generate biofuels, hydrogen gas, methane, and other valuable inorganic and organic chemicals. Moreover, we examine the key challenges for implementing these systems and compare them to similar renewable energy technologies. Although commercial development is already underway in several different applications, ranging from wastewater treatment to industrial chemical production, further research is needed regarding efficiency, scalability, system lifetimes, and reliability."

"Bioelectricity is about the electrical phenomena of life processes, and is a parallel to the medical subject electrophysiology. One basic mechanism is the energy consuming cell membrane ion pumps polarising a cell, and the action potential generated if the cell is excited and ion channels open. The dipolarisation process generates current flow also in the extracellular volume, which again results in measurable biopotential differences in the tissue. An important part of the subject is intracellular and extracellular single cell measurements with microelecroeds. Single neuron activity and signal transmission can be studied by recording potentials with multiple microelectrode arrays. In addition to measure on endogenic sources, bioelectricty also comprises the use of active stimulating current carrying (CC) electrodes. Since bioelectricity is about life processes the experiments are per definition in vivo or ex vivo."

"There isn't a name for it and few eye doctors test for it. But many people are having trouble seeing in the middle distance that demands so much of our focus. Some 80% of us use computers, staring intently on screens set well between typical distance and reading range, often for many hours each day. Add in laptops, pagers, e-readers, smartphones, personal-digital assistants and hand-held video games, each with its own optimum..."

"With the increased use of electronic devices with visual displays, computer vision syndrome is becoming a major public health issue. Improving the visual status of workers using computers results in greater productivity in the workplace and improved visual comfort."

"Many ophthalmic lens manufacturers are currently marketing blue-blocking filters, which they claim will reduce symptoms of Digital Eye Strain (DES). However, there is limited evidence to support the proposal that DES results from the blue light emitted by electronic screens."

"Prior to the advent of artificial lighting, the sun was the primary source of light. When the sun sets today, however, one is hard-pressed to find darkness—illumination from light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and incandescent, fluorescent, and xenon-arc sources (among others) provide indoor and outdoor illumination. The effects of exposure to this seemingly unnatural technological adaptation are starting to become evident, with several studies indicating undesirable associations between exposure to artificial light at night and both reduced sleep quality and diminished alertness during the day. A relatively recent concern is the excessive near-field exposure to handheld and other electronic light-emitting devices. Estimates from large population surveys in developed countries indicate that 35% of people born between the years of 1965 and 1996 spend at least 9 h/day on digital devices, such as smartphones, tablets, or computers, and a recent report indicates that the average American spends 10 h and 39 min viewing screens. Such intense use of these devices has been found to have undesirable effects not only on sleep quality and alertness during waking hours, but also on parameters of physical health (e.g., neck and eye strain, eye fatigue, headache;) and cognitive performance (e.g., poor inhibitory control;). The prevalence of complaints associated with excessive use of computers and other digital devices is so great that the common ocular and physical effects have been collectively termed “Computer Vision Syndrome” (CVS)."

"Many individuals experience eye discomfort and vision problems when viewing digital screens for extended periods. The level of discomfort appears to increase with the amount of digital screen use. The average American worker spends seven hours a day on the computer either in the office or working from home. To help alleviate digital eyestrain, follow the 20-20-20 rule; take a 20-second break to view something 20 feet away every 20 minutes."

"Viewing a computer or digital screen often makes the eyes work harder. As a result, the unique characteristics and high visual demands of computer and digital screen viewing make many individuals susceptible to the development of vision-related symptoms. Uncorrected vision problems can increase the severity of computer vision syndrome (CVS) or digital eyestrain symptoms. Viewing a computer or digital screen is different than reading a printed page. Often the letters on the computer or handheld device are not as precise or sharply defined, the level of contrast of the letters to the background is reduced, and the presence of glare and reflections on the screen may make viewing difficult."

"If nothing is done to address the cause of the problem, the symptoms will continue to recur and perhaps worsen with future digital screen use."

"CVS, or digital eyestrain, can be diagnosed through a comprehensive eye examination. Testing, with special emphasis on visual requirements at the computer or digital device working distance, may include:"

"Solutions to digital screen-related vision problems are varied. However, they can usually be alleviated by obtaining regular eye care and making changes in how the screen is viewed."

"Worldwide, up to 70 million workers are at risk for computer vision syndrome, and those numbers are only likely to grow. In a report about the condition written by eye care specialists in Nigeria and Botswana and published in Medical Practice and Reviews, the authors detail an expanding list of professionals at risk — accountants, architects, bankers, engineers, flight controllers, graphic artists, journalists, academicians, secretaries and students — all of whom “cannot work without the help of computer.” And that’s not counting the millions of children and adolescents who spend many hours a day playing computer games."

"Studies have indicated 70 percent to 90 percent of people who use computers extensively, whether for work or play, have one or more symptoms of computer vision syndrome. The effects of prolonged computer use are not just vision-related. Complaints include neurological symptoms like chronic headaches and musculoskeletal problems like neck and back pain. The report’s authors, Tope Raymond Akinbinu of Nigeria and Y. J. Mashalla of Botswana, cited four studies demonstrating that use of a computer for even three hours a day is likely to result in eye symptoms, low back pain, tension headache and psychosocial stress. Still, the most common computer-related complaint involves the eyes, which can develop blurred or double vision as well as burning, itching, dryness and redness, all of which can interfere with work performance."

"One reason the problem is so pervasive: Unlike words printed on a page that have sharply defined edges, electronic characters, which are made up of pixels, have blurred edges, making it more difficult for eyes to maintain focus. Unconsciously, the eyes repeatedly attempt to rest by shifting their focus to an area behind the screen, and this constant switch between screen and relaxation point creates eyestrain and fatigue. Another unconscious effect is a greatly reduced frequency of blinking, which can result in dry, irritated eyes. Instead of a normal blink rate of 17 or more blinks a minute, while working on a computer the blink rate is often reduced to only about 12 to 15 blinks. But there are additional problems. The head’s distance from the screen and position in relation to it are also important risk factors. To give the eyes a comfortable focusing distance, the screen should be about 20 to 26 inches away from the face. The closer the eyes are to the monitor, the harder they have to work to accommodate to it."

"I could have restricted myself in this book to only the most sober physical calculations. But in order to create the necessary respect for my idea (otherwise a realization of this idea is unthinkable), I felt impelled to draw a few pictures of the future... and I have set up some fantastic claims. Naturally, here also, I have said nothing that might not be possible by present scientific standards, and I will now show that I am also on completely scientific ground with this idea of a reflector."

"A rocket with the necessary equipment is sent aloft and there given a lateral propulsion which puts it into an elliptical orbit around the earth. I will call this rotation about the earth "revolution". Major axis perpendicular to the ecliptic, perigee in the south 1,000 km above the earth's surface, apogee in the north 5,000 km above the earth's surface."

"The miniature facets are adjusted by hand... It is sufficient to simply let the sun shine on the miniature reflector and then turn the facets so that the reflected light strikes those parts of the globe corresponding to the region to be irradiated."

"Whether we must seek to constantly reflect the light on the earth vertically or are, in fact, able to is another question. I will assume that we can in order to study the single elements which determine the path of the reflector. (s are also used in calculations, although it is known that they do not exist.)"

"In the south... the main task of large reflectors... of making polar regions arable, is not feasible. If the glaciers of Antarctica were melted, the level of the ocean would rise uncomfortably (6-8 m). Hopefully, by then man will be sensible enough at least to leave a cold zone for the protection of nature."

"So for the southern hemisphere and the tropics there would only remain the illumination of large cities at night and perhaps supplying solar plants with more light as well as the influencing of the weather."

"In the north, on the other hand, outside of , there are no such masses of land-ice (however much ice there may be, no danger arises from melting ice that floats in the water), and the glaciers of Greenland will remain because if their high location and because there will be more snowfall on Greenland if the polar sea melts."

"The cultural tasks are... possible to fulfill. For example, if a sea route to the ports of Siberia is to be kept ice-free, a route must only be chosen that runs approximately in the direction of the winter wind from the Gulf Stream... light is thrown on a relatively narrow and short strip running from east to west... to the extent that the sky clouds over at this place. ...[T]he direction of the wind and ...the earth's rotation coincide. Hereby the earth always rotates as we need it ...By the time the light patch has passed along the whole stretch, the fog at the beginning will either have settled or been blown away... Then one can begin at the beginning again, Since the clouds hold the heat above the shipping lane... a reflector 100 km in diameter is... sufficient."

"Enough of this. They are only dreams of the future. Bold ones? Perhaps, but we have already experienced... bolder ideas. Who would have believed in 1894 that, a few years later, one would see through a person by means of Roentgen rays? PHILANDER's statement (Medical Fairy Tales), "Man will be made transparent like a jelly-fish", was bolder than this dream of the future; that required finding something completely new, while here we are dealing with laws of nature already known.—Accomplishing these things will certainly require the conversion of enormous energies. But were not hundred times greater sums of money expended during the World War? In one year, the nations of Europe spend more on smoking and drinking than the whole sodium reflector would cost. War and narcotics are quite unnecessary things, yet more money is spent on them than on something useful. Should not mankind, in an exceptional case, also save something for constructive work?"

"Ref: Philander, Medizinische Märchen"

"shields for planets such as Venus or Mars would... be large, complex structures requiring vast amounts of lunar or asteroidal material... and long-range transportation... One... stepping stone to understanding and mastering the technologies and processes... would be the construction of a shield to offset the greenhouse effect on... Earth. Such... would not require interplanetary capabilities."

"The time required for the removal of... [[w:Greenhouse gases|[greenhouse] gases]] from the atmosphere by natural processes is... uncertain: current estimates are several centuries. The uncertainties... [have] led to calls for... restrictions on the generation of greenhouse gases. ...The existence of a possible technical solution could... have a major short-term impact in influencing short term consumption restrictions, even if the solution could not be implemented until the next century."

"A conceptually simple method for offsetting the greenhouse radiation trapping effects would be to decrease the solar heating by the use of a space-based solar shield."

"Approximately 2% of the solar radiation reaching Earth must be blocked to offset the predicted greenhouse trapping in the next century."

"An ideal opaque shield would scatter the Earth bound solar energy into diffuse infrared energy."

"The shield may also be transparent and simply scatter the visible photons away from the Earth. ...A glass shield may act as a prism to deflect the sunlight away from the planet in accordance with ."

"can be formed into glass for either a transparent or opaque shield."

"The glass may be launched to the shield location by a . A number of studies have indicated that mass drivers are feasible and economical for launching unmanned payloads from the lunar surface. If the glass sheet is sufficiently flexible it may be formed into sheet on the lunar surface and launched in rolls."

"Oberth... began the book Men in Outer Space: New Projects for Rockets and Space Travel... written in the style accessible to the general reader. ...Published in 1955 in German, it was translated into English, French, Italian, Dutch, and even in Croatian! ...Oberth's new book was indeed "cosmic," and this gave it a cardinal distinction from his classic book of the 1920s. ...A supplemental chapter ...is devoted to "s," a theme which occupied Oberth all his life. A short description ...is already present in the 1923 book. In 1929, when he published his fundamental work, Ways to Space Travel, he included a much more comprehensive description... in the chapter... "Space Stations." ...[A]lmost the entire chapter is devoted to space mirrors. In the 1954 book... a new varient... is presented. Eventually in Bucharest in 1978, an entire book (in German) was devoted to this theme. ...[T]he primary purpose for the space mirror would today be called an ecological one ...At the time ...there was ...no robotics technology, and he assumed all the work after ...erection ...would ...be carried out manually by astronauts."

"[A] giant net (similar to a trawl) would be erected in outer space, constructed in a hexagonal mesh pattern. This net would be stretched out and a tension sufficient to rotate the entire net would be maintained by . The rotation would be begun by special rockets and... continue because it was in a vacuum. The diameter of each hexagon would be about 10 kilometers, and the entire mirror would have a circular disk shape with a diameter of about 100 to 200 kilometers. Within each hexagon, a round mirror approximately 10 kilometers in diameter, would be installed. ...[Each] single mirror would be capable of being [independently] tilted... initiated by... electric s."

"Such a mirror, he asserted, could not only light up the cities at night... but could also have a decisive influence on weather and climate."

"[T]he ice in the usable areas of the north polar seas could be melted... to navigate the northern coasts of Europe and Siberia year round. The warming of the Caspian Sea could... produce rain in arid regions of Central Asia. Directing... rays... where spring and autumn frosts are expected would allow... increase[d] fertility... Oberth claimed... it would open up... predicting the weather, but also... determining the weather."

"Oberth proposed to shade planets located close to the sun... with gigantic cosmic shields... Vice versa, the planets... further from the sun... would be warmed... with... gigantic cosmic mirrors."

"[H]is belief... a reduction in the cost of building large structures in outer space could be achieved by delivering the necessary materials from the moon... [H]e presupposed the existence of the necessary industrial plants on the moon, but the end result would be a thousand-fold reduction in the cost of building large structures in space."

"[T]he problem of possible changes in climate may be better solved by cooperative application of modern technologies rather than by international measures focused on prohibitions."

"Greenhouse warming of the Earth due to human activities is a possibility, moreover one for which mitigative/remedial actions of the types proposed here can be at once deliberate and effective. In contrast, Ice Age-severity cooling... that have occurred quasi-periodically many times during the last 1.2 million years, is a practical certainty. Moreover, a several-decade duration cold snap of Ice Age Maximum temperature-drop is known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere with essentially no warning during the last interglacial period, under precursor climatic conditions only slightly warmer than the present-day one."

"A wide range of techniques has been proposed for increasing the planetary , ranging from painting surfaces white to placing mirrors in orbit between the Earth and the sun."

"This sense of taboo was based on a range of arguments against research on albedo modification that have been raised by the broader scientific community, including: 1. the so-called moral hazard issue, that is, the possibility that research on climate engineering could be perceived as an implicit legitimization, and thus reduce the motivation for mitigating anthropogenic emissions; 2. the concern that reducing temperatures by albedo modification could distract from other impacts of a fossil-fuel-based economy and the resulting CO2 emissions, such as ocean acidification; 3. the “slippery slope” concern that research into understanding the potential effectiveness could cascade toward the development and deployment of the techniques under investigation; and 4. contention about the perceived “techno-fix” approach to address environmental challenges, that is, the notion that technology-caused problems can simply be fixed with more and better technology."

"[G]iven the balance of results of model studies over the last decade... and the challenging directions that this implies both for future research and also for sociopolitical aspects, especially public perception and the development of good governance principles, we have to conclude that the overall verdict is still out. The responsibility still resides with the scientific community to conduct research and engage in the broader dialogue in a responsible way, so that whatever the outcome, historians will hopefully look back and conclude that it was indeed of value—and in that sense a moral imperative—to begin carefully investigating this topic... Perhaps this will already be clear by the time of the next special section like this one, which, following those in 1996 and 2006, should be due in 2026."

"They were deployed and linked with Village and Sector Executive Secretaries to give basic technology skills to the community. The key knowledge they have to disseminate includes the use of the internet, Irembo platform and access to learning content."

"Hari n’a) bavuga ngo telefone zirarangaza najye kwandika ariko ukwiye kubaza icyo bize ukanareba ko aribyo arimo kureba, nsomera ibyo uri kureba, ukamusobanuza ibyo aribyo ukanabaza umuyobozi w’ishuri niba ibyo arimo kureba ariyo bigiraho."

"Parents and students who have access to smartphones should visit digital ambassadors for basic training. They are available across the villages or can be accessed at their service centers across the country."

"EDTECH PARTNERS ADDRESS TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES KT Press (April 27, 2021)"

"Ababyeyi mu ishuri ni bo baba bafite ijambo kuko nibo baba bazanye abana babo kugira ngo barererwe muri iryo shuri, mukabaza muti ese kuki abana bacu batiga bakoresheje mudasobwa, kuki batari gukoresha ikoranabuhanga biga kandi tubizi neza ko bazanye ibikoresho."

"All through my childhood, I wasn’t your typical girl as I was so into gadgets, electronics and anything to do with technology. I knew I wanted to pursue and develop my love for technology through education."

"ICT is very crucial in today’s world and solves a lot of day to day problems thus making life easier such as mobile money and mobile banking that Rwanda has also taken on."

"I felt so humbled that our President could actually find time to listen to our [the youth] ideas."

"Change is not easy, and some resisted. However, after it became a rule, every lecturer adjusted and universities have changed to use a model platform. Covid-19 became like an accelerator,”"

"Parents need awareness to know the benefits of technology and support their children. Technology is based on two things; skills and equipment. But it was good to see parents working hard to support their children through the technology learning journey. It was not easy, but during Covid-19 people learnt a lot,”"

"Girls should be passionate about what they study as passion drives them to thrive in the field. I assure them that hard work pays and nothing comes without trying. It is important to be confident, have a persistent spirit, and collaborate with others."

""Rwanda stands ready to receive as many as possible under this partnership, we have the capacity to receive in the tens of thousands but for the moment it will be on a gradual basis."

"Not at all, actually based on our history we understand the importance of protecting anybody from hate speech and discrimination, this is not tolerated in our society, the freedom from discrimination due to sexual orientation of a person is guaranteed in our constitution and the rule of law is there to enforce that.""

"It is Rwanda that will be testing the claim, these people are coming to Rwanda to be relocated and re-integrated in Rwandan society."

""Under this partnership, we are getting substantial investment that will benefit all migrants and all refugees in Rwanda, which means that all those vulnerabilities will be addressed under this investment partnership that we have with the UK,"

"The UK's responsibility to take some refugees from Rwanda was "only for these very isolated and extreme cases""

"We are ready to accommodate as many (migrants) as the UK is willing to send.”"

"Rwanda is “not a prison state” and repeated assurances that authorities will not be able to stop migrants leaving the country if they wish – giving rise to questions over whether some may try to make their way back to the UK again."

"The government will help people return to their country of origin, or another where they have a right to reside, if they choose, she said, adding: “We do not want to create statelessness or a revolving door of migrants.”"

"Mercury doesn't contribute its valence electrons readily to the [electron] soup. The thinner soup can't bind the mercury atoms together very strongly. Mercury atoms easily slip past and away from each other. Heat easily overcomes the weak binding between mercury atoms, and mercury boils and melts at lower temperatures than any other metal. Because the valence electron soup is thinner for mercury, its electrical and thermal conductivity are poor."

"While Paracelsus was pressing his doctrines on all sides, and endeavouring to lead chemistry into a new channel, another, Agricola, was quietly at work among the mines of Saxony, utterly indifferent to all but the advance of his science. It is to Agricola's systematic observations that we trace the beginnings of the science of mineralogy. In metallurgy, also, he was a pioneer, the first to give a clear and succinct account of the preparation of many metals. He taught the condensation and purification of sulphur given off during the roasting of many s, the separation of silver from gold by means of nitric and sulphuric acid, the preparation of such bodies as salt, , and saltpetre on a large scale. The apparatus described by Agricola and employed by him for the and testing of ores were still in use at the end of the eighteenth century. Agricola stands out solitary among the men of his time as one pursuing chemistry from pure love of the science; his work had no other aim than the increase of knowledge."

"Iron yields to certain degrees of beatings or repeated pressure; its impenetrable molecules, purified by man and made homogeneous, disintegrate; and, without being in fusion, the metal no longer has the same virtue of resistance. Marshals, locksmiths, tool makers, all the workers who constantly work this metal then express the state of it by a word of their technology: "The iron is retty!" they say, appropriating this expression exclusively devoted to hemp, the disorganization of which is obtained by retting. Well, the human soul, or if you will the threefold energy of body, heart, and spirit, is in an iron-like situation, as a result of certain repeated shocks. It is thus with men like hemp and iron — they are retty."

"A neutral salt, which is composed of an acid and alkali, does not possess the acrimony of either of its constituent parts. It can easily be separated from water, has little or no effect upon metals, is incapable of being joined to inflammable bodies, and of corroding and dissolving animals and vegetables; so that the attraction both of the acid and alkali for these several substances, seems to be suspended till they are again separated from one another."

"One worker on one of the supports... either manually or with a trowel distributes the mortar over the chicken wire... Simultaneously, another worker from within the room... holds the mortar which is applied from the outside with a metal float or trowel in order that the mortar does not fall. Once this operation is completed, the required finish is applied both from the outside and the inside."

"The export of into Italy was strictly forbidden; but aluminium was almost the only metal that Italy produced in quantities beyond her own needs. The importation of scrap iron and into Italy was sternly vetoed in the name of public justice. But as the Italian metallurgical industry made but little use of them, and as steel billets and were not interfered with, Italy suffered no hindrance. Thus, the measures pressed with so great a parade were not real sanctions to paralyse the aggressor, but merely such half-hearted sanctions as the aggressor would tolerate, because in fact, though onerous, they stimulated Italian war spirit. The League of Nations, therefore, proceeded to the rescue of Abyssinia on the basis that nothing must be done to hamper the invading Italian armies. These facts were not known to the British public at the time of the election. They earnestly supported the policy of the sanctions, and believed that this was a sure way of bringing the Italian assault upon Abyssinia to an end."

"The Franklin sold at £4. 6s, each at the furnace, and at Philadelphia £18 per ton, the price varying with the metal."

"The art of tempering and iron developed in India long before its known appearance in Europe; , for example, erected at Delhi (ca. 380 A.D.) an iron pillar that stands untarnished today after fifteen centuries; and the quality of metal, or manner of treatment, which has preserved it from rust or decay is still a mystery to modern metallurgical science. Before the European invasion the smelting of iron in small charcoal furnaces was one of the major industries of India. The Industrial Revolution taught Europe how to carry out these processes more cheaply on a larger scale, and the Indian industry died under the competition. Only in our own time are the rich mineral resources of India being again exploited and explored."

"[T]here are not really 2-dimensional metals because conventional metals, for physics reasons... don't really like to be in the 2-D state, and most of them immediately oxidize anyway... So by discovering ... we created materials which are 2-dimensional metals. So we... closed the gap in existing the series of materials."

"Tradition has it that not only concerned himself with the unification of Egypt but also with the control of the river: to him is attributed the first damming of the Nile, the digging of dikes for agricultural purposes and indeed the first attempt to control and apportion the waters of the river. The wealth of Egypt was thus, with , based upon its agricultural output. However, unlike Mesopotamia, the Egyptians had on their doorstep a number of mineral resources that they were able to exploit with little effort, including copper ores, gold and a wide range of rocks suitable for building and the making of a wide variety of ornaments. [S]hortly before the year 3000 metallurgists made a discovery that was to transform the entire "industry." ...by mixing a small quantity of tin ore with the copper ores when... smelted... they discovered the alloy . The occurrence of tinstone... does not occur in the same type of deposit as do the ores of copper, but rather, [near] veins of gold. ...Thus tinstone ...may well have been noticed during washing for gold... finding that the little black lumps of ore were relatively heavy, presumably made various attempts at smelting them until they arrived empirically at a suitable alloy... [T]he effect is to reduce the melting point... they had a far more fluid metal that was much easier to cast. ...the quality of casting improved dramatically."

"Aristotle had considered metals to be formed by the combination of moist and dry exhalations, and in the Jabirian works these... are... vapours of mercury and sulphur. The cause of the different metals was the... quality of the sulphur... The term sulphur ...as a component of metals probably referred to a volatile combustible material to which no... substance corresponded exactly. Likewise mercury... may... have been... an approximation to the other volatile liquid component of metals. ...The notion that metals contained a combustible principle persisted, and... provided the inspiration for the phlogiston theory."

"The Jabirian alchemists... believed that metals were ultimately composed of the four Aristotelian elements earth, water, air and fire... A base metal had to be treated with a medicine or elixir to adjust... qualities... with the proportions of gold. ...[Q]ualities of heat, cold, moisture and dryness could each be separated in pure form. ...First they subjected various organic materials to ... which often resulted in... a volatile combustible... (air), a liquid (water), a combustible tarry material (fire) and a dry residue (ash). [Each of] [t]hese elements were supposed... composed of two qualities, and... could be isolated by... purification. Thus water... could be converted into pure cold by repeated distillation... and further [distillations] in the presence of a drying agent. The resulting pure cold... a brilliant white solid."

"My invention shows a new product which helps to replace timber where it is endangered by wetness, as in wood flooring, water containers, plant pots, etc. The new substance consists of a metal net of wire or sticks which are connected or formed like a flexible woven mat. I give this net a form which looks in the best possible way, similar to the articles I want to create. Then I put in hydraulic cement or similar bitumen tar or mix, to fill up the joints."

"Nothing can vex the Devil more Than the name of him whom we adore. Therefore doth it delight me best To stand in the choir among the rest, With the great organ trumpeting Through its metallic tubes, and sing: Et verbum caro factum est! [And the Word was made flesh!] These words the devil cannot endure, For he knoweth their meaning well! Him they trouble and repel, Us they comfort and allure, And happy it were, if our delight Were as great as his affright!"

"In the history of war and society we single out three main innovations to describe significant changes before 1800: the introduction of metal, when humans abandoned stone weapons for ones made from and iron; the domestication of the horse, which gave warriors greater mobility and speed; and the introduction of , which transformed war on land and at sea. (Since other parts of the world, such as the Americas, did not have horses until the Europeans brought them in the sixteenth century and some parts of the world, such as Australia, never developed metal weapons, not all human societies have experienced change at the same time.) In each case, of course, many other things were happening both to technology and to society. Metal weapons were only a part of the story: societies had to develop the soldiers and the infrastructures to make use of them. Horses were more formidable when the enabled them to pull s or later on when they could carry armed warriors. The introduction of gunpowder too was accompanied by other important developments: in metallurgy, for example, so that guns did not explode when they were fired, or in the design and navigation of ships, so that they could make use of the new cannon."

"The metals are all essentially identical; they differ only in form. Now, the form brings out accidental causes, which the experimenter must try to discover and remove, as far as possible. Accidental causes impede the regular union of sulphur and mercury; for every metal is a combination of sulphur and mercury. A diseased womb may give birth to a weakly, leprous child, although the seed was good; the same is true of the metals which are generated in the bowels of the earth, which is a womb for them; any cause whatever, or local trouble, may produce an imperfect metal. When pure sulphur comes in contact with pure mercury, after more or less time, and by the permanent action of nature, gold is produced."

"Mercury as a liquid metal is capable of dissolving other metals and forming metallic solutions. These are generally called 'amalgams.' The formation of these solutions is often accompanied by the development of a large amount of heat—for instance when and sodium are dissolved... but sometimes heat is absorbed, as... when is dissolved. ...[T]he solution of metals in mercury is accompanied by the formation of definite chemical compounds of the mercury with the metals dissolved. ...[I]n many cases such compounds have undoubtedly been obtained, and their existence is clearly shown by the evident crystalline structure and characteristic appearance of many amalgams."

"Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds, At which the universal host up sent A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night."

"Few would defend a small view of Alchemy as "Mother of Chemistry", and confuse its true goal with those external metal arts. Alchemy is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality, aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter. Not to suggest that material operations are ever abandoned. The adept holds to both the mystical and physical work."

"The history of science may be described as the breaking down, and the crumbling away, of artificially constructed barriers. All the great men of science have been famous wall-breakers. ...It is worthy to remark that the central conception of the alchemists ...was the unity of natural phenomena. ...[T]heir arguments would be somewhat as follows—Plants grow from seeds ...animals become larger, stronger, and more complete ...the plant may well be called more perfect than the seed, and the full grown animal more perfect than the immature ...both plants and animals grow, come to their prime, and decay; and there are degrees of perfection in the animal and vegetable worlds. Now—we may suppose the argument of the alchemist... minerals and metals and all inanimate things should grow, and change, from less perfect to more perfect forms; as there are degrees of perfectness and dignity in among all living things, so... among all things; some metals disappear in acrid liquids, and... are... easily worn away, they are readily melted and burnt to ; but some other metals are not swallowed up by corrosive liquids, nor... worn away with ease, nor readily changed in fire; there are evidently noble and base metals, perfect and imperfect metals; and as the less perfect seed... produces the more perfect plant... rendered yet more perfect by cultivation, so the imperfect metals change slowly into... more perfect, and this... can be hastened by man's art and devices. ...[L]iving things are more perfect that inanimate things ...[M]uch more must changes from immature to mature forms be constantly proceeding from dead things like minerals and metals ...[I]t is probable that the plasticity of the minerals and metals will be greater ...hence ...it will be a comparatively easy thing to grow a noble metal like gold from ignoble metals like and copper, although it is impossible to change one kind of animal into another or one sort of plant into another ... A vague conception of the unity of nature... led to little accurate knowledge..; all that could be done was to perform a vast number of inaccurate and incomplete experiments, and to state the results in loose and slipshod language of the vague but sonorous hypothesis which prompted the experiments. And so although the hypothesis postulated the unity of nature there was no unity in the experimental results... collected to support the hypothesis. ...A man who sets out to discover what is must endeavour to put aside all his notions of what ought to be; it is only when he has gained a solid foundation of verified and accurate facts that he may venture to make a definite guess concerning the cause ...but unless he makes clearly stated guesses ...scientific hypotheses—he will remain a mere collector of half facts ..."

", The Story of the Chemical Elements (1897) pp. 16-19."

"RECOMMENDATION 6: Ferrocement in Disaster Relief. After fires, floods, droughts, and earthquakes... [t]ransportation is often disrupted... Supplies of bulky conventional building materials may be stranded outside the disaster area, whereas the basic ingredients of ferrocement may be available on the site or easily transported. The versatility of ferrocement also reduces logistical supply problems: wire mesh, cement, sand, and water can be substituted for the metal used for roofing, woods or plastic for shelters and clinics, asphalt for helipads, steel for bridges, and so on. Moreover, most ferrocement structures, though built for an emergency, will last long after the emergency is over. ...[F]errocement could be used at a disaster site for many purposes: Transport facilities, from simple boats to barges, docks, marinas, helipads, and simple floating bridges or short footbridges as well as road repairs. ...Food-storage facilities, quickly designed to local needs and quickly built, to preserve emergency food supplies. ...Emergency shelters such as, for example, the quonset type of roof, which is easy to erect and highly efficient. ..Public health facilities, such as latrines and clinics, built with ferrocement roofs and stucco-type walls of the same wire mesh and mortar. ...[C]adres of ferrocement workers could be trained in emergency applications and the supervision of local laborers at the disaster site."

"From this epocha the hypothesis of the tria prima seems wholly to have been abandoned: whilst a very different doctrine was proposed by Beccher in his Physica Subterranea [1669], and to which we are perhaps indebted for the present advanced state of chemical science; since he was the first to point out chemical analysis as the only true method of ascertaining the elements of bodies. According to his doctrine, all terrestrial bodies are composed of water, air, and three earths; viz. the fusible, the inflammable or sulphureous, and the mercurial. The three earths, combined in nearly equal proportions, compose the metals: when the proportion of mercurial earth is very small, they compose stones; when the fusible predominates, the resulting compounds are the precious stones; when the sulphureous predominates, and the fusible is deficient, the compounds are the calorific earths: fusible earth and water compose an universal acid, very much resembling sulphuric acid, from which all other acids derive their acidity; water, fusible earth, and mercurial earth, constitute common salt; sulphureous earth and the universal acid form sulphur. Such was the theory of Beccher, which was afterward considerably modified by Stahl."

"I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this... that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes... pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts... all of them fixed and inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not."

"Alchemical theory was essentially static throughout the medieval period. ...Paracelsus was the herald of a new era, an era of . His contribution to alchemical theory lay in the addition to sulphur and mercury of a third principle, which he called '.' Materially this was recognised as the principle of uninflammability and fixidity. ...[T]he tria prima, or three 'hypostatical principles' could be interpreted in either a material or a spiritual sense. In the words of Paracelsus himself: 'Know, then, that all the seven metals are born from a threefold matter... Mercury is the spirit, Sulphur is the soul, and Salt is the body... the soul... unites those two contraries, the body and spirit, and changes them into essence.' ...similar to the material effect of the liquid menstruum, or Hermetic Stream, in uniting sophic sulphur and sophic mercury to produce the Philospher's Stone."

"It seemed probable that the large activity of some of these minerals, compared with and , was due to the presence of small quantities of some very active substance, which was different from the known bodies thorium and uranium. This supposition was completely verified by the work of M. and Mme Curie, who were able to separate from pitchblende by purely chemical methods two active bodies, one of which in the pure state is over a million times more active than the metal uranium. This important discovery was due entirely to the property of radio-activity possessed by the new bodies. The only guide in their separation was the activity of the products obtained. ...The activity of the specimens thus served as a basis of rough qualitative and quantitative analysis, analogous in some respects to the indication of the spectroscope."

"The magnetism as exhibited in iron is an isolated phenomenon in nature. What it is that makes this metal behave so radically different from all other materials in this respect has not yet been ascertained, though many theories have been suggested. As regards magnetism, the molecules of the various bodies behave like hollow beams partly filled with a heavy fluid and balanced in the middle in the manner of a see-saw. Evidently some disturbing influence exists in nature which causes each molecule, like such a beam, to tilt either one or the other way. If the molecules are tilted one way, the body is magnetic; if they are tilted the other way, the body is non-magnetic; but both positions are stable, as they would be in the case of the hollow beam, owing to the rush of the fluid to the lower end. Now, the wonderful thing is that the molecules of all known bodies went one way, while those of iron went the other way. This metal, it would seem, has an origin entirely different from that of the rest of the globe. It is highly improbable that we shall discover some other and cheaper material which will equal or surpass iron in magnetic qualities."

"[M]etals remained the alchemists' chief concern... they seemed in their own way alive, whereas the calces (s) from which they were manufactured crumbled to dust and looked like cinders. Theory at once suggested a natural analogy. The metal was formed from the calx by the incorporation of or spirit; and this theory of metal-formation long remained in favour, being revived around 1700 as the 'phlogiston' theory. The central problem about metals was to identify the volitile constituents which combined with the calces to form the finished metal. For a long time, the status of quicksilver was ambiguous... resembling much more the volatile reagents which corrode metallic surfaces: mercury, in fact, forms an amalgam with other metals, and is even capable of dissolving gold... So the Alchemy of Avicenna classed mercury as a 'spirit' rather than a 'body'..."

"Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle, ...says, in the beginning of his book on fossils, 'stones are produced from earth, metals from water.' ...Theophrastus is perhaps the best observer among the ancients, whose works are in our possession, and [his] theories... cannot be considered as an unfavourable specimen of the theoretical physics of the age."

"[E]early chemical discoveries led to the pursuit of alchemy, the objects of which were to produce a substance capable of converting all other metals into gold: and an universal remedy calculated indefinitely to prolong the period of human life."

"The processes supposed to relate to the transmutation of metals, and the , were probably first made known to the Europeans during the time of the ..."

"Arnald of Villa Nova... was one of the earliest European inquirers who attended to chemical operations. ...[H]e firmly believed in the transmutation of metals; the same opinions are attributed to him and to Geber; and he seems to have followed the study with no other views than those of preparing medicines, and attempting the composition of the philosopher's stone."

"Beccher, ...after having studied with minute attention, the operations of , and the phænomena of the kingdom, formed the bold idea of explaining the whole system of the earth by the mutual agency and changes of a few elements. And by supposing the existence of a vitrifiable, a metallic, and an inflammable earth, he attempted to account for the various productions of rocks, crystalline bodies, and metallic veins, assuming a continued interchange of principles between the atmosphere, the ocean, and the solid surface of the globe, and considering the operations of nature as all capable of being imitated by art."

"had been used to tinge glass in in the sixteenth century; but the metal was unknown till the time of Brandt, and this celebrated Swedish chemist discovered it in 1733."

"The properties of , which was announced as a peculiar metal by Kaim in 1770, were minutely investigated by Scheele and Bergman a few years after."

"Scheele discovered in 1781; and soon after a metal was extracted from it by Messrs. Fausto & Juan José] D' Elhuyars."

"Platina had been brought into Europe and examined by Lewis in 1749 and in 1803, Descotils, Fourcroy, and Vauquelin announced a new metallic substance in it; but the complete investigation of the properties of this extraordinary body was reserved for Messrs. Tennant and Wollaston, who in 1803 and 1804 discovered in it no less than four new metallic substances, besides the body which exists in it in the largest proportion, namely, iridium, osmium, palladium, and rhodium."

"By researches, the commencement of which is owing to Messrs. Nicholson and Carlisle, in 1800, which were continued by Cruickshank, Henry, Wollaston, Children, Pepys, Pfaff, Desormes, Biot, Thenard, Hissinger, and Berzelius, it appeared that various compound bodies were capable of decomposition by electricity; and experiments, which it was my good fortune to institute, proved that several substances which had never been separated into any other forms of matter in the common processes of experiment, were susceptible of analysis by electrical powers; in consequence of these circumstances, the fixed es and several of the earths have been shewn to be metals combined with oxygene; various new agents have been furnished to chemistry, and many novel results obtained by their application, which at the same time that they have strengthened some of the doctrines of the school of Lavoisier, have overturned others, and have proved that the generalizations of the Antiphlogistic philosophers were far from having anticipated the whole progress of discovery."

"From the first discovery of the production of metals from rude ores, to the knowledge of the bleaching liquor, chemistry has been continually subservient to cultivation and improvement."

"The relations of the common metals to the bases of the alkalies and earths, and the gradations of resemblance between the bases of the earths and s, point out as probable a similarity in the constitution of all inflammable bodies; and there are not wanting experiments, which render their possible decomposition far from a chimerical idea."

"The whole work was done under conditions of great mental excitement. His cousin ,.. his assistant, relates that when he [Humphrey Davy] saw the minute globules of the quicksilver-like metal burst through the crust of potash and take fire, his joy knew no bounds; he actually danced about the room in ecstasy, and it was some time before he was sufficiently composed to continue his experiments. The rapidity with which he accumulated results after this first feeling of delirious delight had passed was extraordinary."

"Before the middle of November he had obtained most of the leading facts. In a letter dated November 13th he tells W. H. Pepys—"

"He had observed that although potash when dry is a nonconductor, it readily conducts when it becomes damp by exposure to air, and in this state "fuses and decomposes by strong electrical powers.""

"It is frequently stated that Davy was enabled to isolate the metals of the alkalis because of the large and powerful voltaic battery which he had at his disposal in the Royal Institution. This is not correct. The battery he employed was of very moderate dimensions, and not by any means extraordinary in power. It was the success he thus achieved that caused the large battery, which is probably referred to, to be constructed, by special subscription, in 1809."

"It would seem from his description of its properties that the potassium he obtained was most probably alloyed with sodium derived from impure potash. Potassium is solid up to 143° F.; but, as Davy subsequently found, an alloy of potassium and sodium is fluid at ordinary temperatures. ...When the potassium was exposed to air its metallic lustre was immediately destroyed, and it was ultimately wholly reconverted into potash by absorption of oxygen and moisture."

"The "basis" of potash at 50° F. was a soft and malleable solid with the lustre of polished silver."

"It may be converted into vapour at a temperature approaching a red-heat, and may be distilled unchanged; it is a perfect conductor of electricity and an excellent conductor of heat. Its most marked difference from the common run of metals was its extraordinarily low specific gravity."

"Although no great stress can be laid on numbers so obtained, they serve to indicate that Davy had not yet obtained the pure metal."

"The "basis" of soda is described as a white opaque substance of the lustre and general appearance of silver. It is soft and malleable, and is a good conductor of heat and electricity. Its specific gravity was found by flotation in a mixture of oil of sassafras and naphtha... It was found to fuse at about 180° F. (the real melting point of sodium is 197.5°). Its action on a number of substances—oxygen, , water, etc.—is then described, and its general behaviour contrasted with that of the "basis" of potash."

"He then enters upon some general observations on the relations of the "bases" of potash and soda to other bodies."

"He begins by again drawing attention to the various surmises which had been made respecting the true nature of potassium and sodium. Although these substances had been isolated, and in the hands of chemists for upwards of two years, their properties were so extraordinary when compared with those of the metals in general, that many philosophers hesitated to consider them as true metals."

"The general properties and chemical activities of and sodium are so very similar that as a matter of commercial production that metal which can be most economically obtained is necessarily the one most largely manufactured, and of the two that metal is sodium. To-day, sodium is made by thousands of tons, and by a process which in principle is identical with that by which it was first made by Davy, i.e., by the of fused caustic soda."

"[A]fter a series of revolutions in its manufacture, sodium, having been produced from time to time on a manufacturing scale by a variety of metallurgical methods involving purely thermal processes of reduction and distillation, entirely dissociated from electricity, we should have now got back to the very principle of the process which first brought the metal to light. And that this has been industrially possible is entirely owing to another of Davy's discoveries - possibly indeed the greatest of them all—Michael Faraday."

"Before me, stretching down to the river, was the factory where a score of workers, clad in helmets and gauntlets and swathed like so many Knights Templar, travel-stained and war-worn, their visages lit up by the yellow soda flames, and their ears half-deafened with the sound of exploding —a veritable inferno—were repeating on a Gargantuan scale the little experiment first made a century ago in the cellars of this building; turning out, day and night, hundredweights of the plastic metal in place of the little pin-heads which then burst upon the astonished and delighted gaze of Davy."

"Even before the appearance of The Sceptical Chemist there was a growing conviction that the old hypotheses as to the essential nature of matter were inadequate and misleading. ...[T]he four "elements" of the Peripatetics had become merged into the tria prima—the "salt," "sulphur," and "mercury"—of the Paracelsians. As the phenomena of chemical action became better known... the conception of the tria prinui, as understood by Paracelsus and his followers, was incapable of being generalised into a theory of chemistry. Becher, while clinging to the conception of three primordial substances as making up all forms of matter, changed the qualities hitherto associated with them. According to the new theory, all matter was composed of a mercurial, a vitreous, and a combustible substance or principle, in varying proportions, depending upon the nature of the particular form of matter. When a body was burnt or a metal calcined, the combustible substance—the terra pinguis of Becher—escaped."

"Other metals, like lead and mercury, did not appear to burn; but on heating them they gradually lost their metallic appearance, and became converted into calces. This operation was known as . In the act of burning or of calcination phlogiston was expelled. Hence metals were essentially compound: they consisted of phlogiston and a calx, the nature of which determined the character of the metal. By adding phlogiston to a calx the metal was regenerated. Thus, on heating the calx of or of with , or , or wood, metallic zinc or lead was again formed. When a candle burns, its phlogiston is transferred to the air; if burned in a limited supply of air, combustion ceases, because the air becomes saturated with phlogiston."

"Some of the alchemists had discovered that a metal gained, not lost, weight by . This was known as far back as the sixteenth century. It had been pointed out by Cardan and by Libavius. Sulzbach showed that such was the case with mercury. Boyle proved it in the case of tin, and Rey in that of lead. Moreover, as knowledge increased it became certain that Stahl's original conception of the principle of combustion as a ponderable substance he imagined, with Becher, that it was of the nature of an earth was not tenable. The later phlogistians were disposed to regard it as probably identical with . But even hydrogen has weight, and facts seemed to require that phlogiston, if it existed at all, should be devoid of weight."

"[T]he writings and labours of the alchemists were both extensive and important. ...[T]heir studies, although misdirected, were not... haphazard. The alchemists had a definite, and... logical, system of philosophy... [T]hey recognised—(1) the unity of matter; (2) the three principles—philosophical mercury, sulphur, and salt; (3) the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth; and (4) the seven metals—gold, silver, mercury, copper, , tin, and ."

"[W]hen an alchemist converted a metal into its oxide, or, as they expressed it, "made a " of it, he thought he had volatilised its mercury and fixed its sulphur. When he distilled ordinary mercury and found a solid residue in the , he called it the "sulphur" of mercury; when he found a sublimed product in the receiver (mercury bichloride), he termed it the "mercury" of mercury or "corrosive sublimate.""

"The more logical mind of Artephius Longaevus introduced a modification of this theory. He distinguished two properties in a metal—the visible and the occult. The former, comprehending its colour, lustre, extension, and other properties visible to the eye, he called its "sulphur"; the latter, comprehending its fusibility, malleability, volatility, and other properties not visible until after... special treatment, he called its "mercury.""

"The mercury of a metal... represented its lustre, volatility, fusibility, and malleability; the sulphur of the metal, its colour, combustibility, affinity, and hardness."

"The salt of the was merely a means of union between the mercury and the sulphur, just as the vital spirit in man unites soul and body. It was doubtless devised to impart a triple form to the idea, in conformity with the method of the theological schoolmen."

"At a still later date [post-16th century] it was argued that exact and natural sciences proceed by induction and deduction, and occult and spiritual sciences by analogy. Following out this line of thought the alchemists produced the following remarkable trilogy:—"

"Wootz was the first high-quality steel made anywhere in the world. According to reports of travelers to the East, the Damascus swords were made by forging small cakes of steel that were manufactured in Southern India. This steel was called wootz steel. It was more than a thousand years before steel as good was made in the West."

"Damascus steel actually consists of an extremely high-carbon cast steel, the best swords being forged in Iran from cakes of steel made in India and known as wootz."

"... Early clocks were inaccurate by as much as half an hour a day, and had to be reset frequently with the aid of a ; breakdowns were numerous. The energies of the early masters seem to have gone as much into ornamenting their clocks as into making them more precise, for the construction of human and animal automata, as well as astronomical indicators, was quite popular. Finally, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch scientist Christian Huygens created the that resulted in a vast improvement in precision. By then the clock was ingrained in the European way of thinking as the artificial model of the cyclical processes of nature, and it was ready to serve as the prototype for the mechanization of a variety of tasks that had previously been performed by hand."

"The invention of the mechanical clock, and the significant perceptual shift that attended it, provides rich and underexamined context for reading Chaucer’s works. Among social scientists it has become “textbook wisdom” that the late medieval invention of the mechanical clock transformed ideas about time."

"By a clock we understand anything characterized by a phenomenon passing periodically through identical phases so that we must assume, by the principle of sufficient reason, that all that happens in a given period is identical with all that happens in an arbitrary period."

"… We are accustomed to regard as real those sense perceptions which are common to different individuals, and which therefore are, in a measure, impersonal. The natural sciences, and in particular, the most fundamental of them, physics, deals with such sense perceptions. The conception of physical bodies, in particular of rigid bodies, is a relatively constant complex of such sense perceptions. A clock is also a body, or a system, in the same sense, with the additional property that the series of events which it counts is formed of elements all of which can be regarded as equal."

"The 1967 General Conference on Weights and Measures defined the of time, the second, based on an atomic transition—specifically, between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of cesium-133. (See Physics Today, August 1968, page 60.) Although Cs atomic clocks remain the standard, their time might be running out. Their underlying atomic transition is excited by radiation with a microwave frequency around 9 × 109 Hz, and after decades of advances, a Cs clock’s frequency can be measured with a fractional uncertainty Δν/ν0 of about one part in 1016. But clocks based on optical transitions operate at frequencies around 1014 Hz, which gives them an advantage in the push for lower uncertainty. (See the article by James Bergquist, Steven Jefferts, and David Wineland, Physics Today, March 2001, page 37.) The current record, 9.4 × 10−19, was set in 2019 by an aluminum ion–based optical atomic clock at ."

"The simplest and perhaps earliest consisted of an earthen vessel with a small hole in the bottom. This was filled with water up to a certain mark and the water was allowed to trickle out of the hole. It would empty itself in approximately the same intervals of time. It was perhaps used for limiting the length of public speeches and the like. In fact there are quite a few references in Greek and Roman writings which would indicate this to have been a fact."

"The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age. For every phase of its development the clock is both the outstanding fact and the typical symbol of the machine: even today no other machine is so ubiquitous. ... In its relationship to determinable quantities of energy, to standardization, to automatic action, and finally to its own special product, accurate timing, the clock has been the foremost machine in modern technics: and at each period it has remained in the lead: it marks a perfection toward which other machines aspire."

"We do not know when men first began to use instruments which were at all similar to modern sundials. A stone fragment in a Berlin museum is thought to be the earliest known sundial, dating from about 1500 B.C. The Bible mentions what some authorities take to have been a sundial (although the meaning is by no means certain) in the days of , king of some 700 years before Christ ... About a century later the Greek philosopher and astronomer Anaximander of is said to have introduced the sundial into Greece."

"It takes a special sort of engineer to build a great guitar amplifier. They must have a sure scientific knowledge of circuit design - but also a great set of ears and a certain gut feel for what will sound great. And, as if that isn’t enough, they need to be gigging guitarists, too, so they understand what players want from amps and pedals and how they can build pro-grade amps to survive the road."

"From Keith Richards's ratty distorted guitar on The Rolling Stones's “Satisfaction” to T-Pain's Auto-Tuned vocals on Lil Wayne's “Lollipop,” music technology has often defined the sound of popular music."

"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the Iife-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human being to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries."

"The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological sutfering, but only after passing through a long and very pain ful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful."

"Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. ... And today’s society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth."

"The same is true when decisions are made on a collective basis if the group making the collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is insignificant."

"It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors)."

"But for most people it is through the power process having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining the goal — that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate opportunity to go through the power process the consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism, abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders. etc. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale. We aren’t the first to mention that the world today seems to be going crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive societies. Abuse of women was common among the Australian aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of the American Indian tribes. But it does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society."

"We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which modern society subjects people. .. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe."

"It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial societies were predominantly rural. The Industrial Revolution vastly increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that lives in them, and modern agricultural technology has made it possible for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did before"

"The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values."

"On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended families and small-scale social groups to at least the same extent as these are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles, that they belonged to no community at all, yet they do not seem to have developed problems as a result."

"Modern man has the sense (largely justified) that change is IMPOSED on him, whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he created change himself, by his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a piece of land of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his own effort. In those days an entire county might have only a couple of hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity than a modern county is."

"In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into group 2: They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort. ... Advertising and marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs, hence they fall into group 2. … Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely through pursuit of the artificial needs created by the advertising and marketing industry, and through surrogate activities."

"Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing the status ladder or functioning as part of the system in some other way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals AUTONOMOUSLY. Most workers are someone else’s employee and, … must spend their days doing what they are told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even people who are in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that many of the franchise-granting companies require applicants for franchises to take a personality test that is designed to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because such persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people who most need autonomy."

"Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in the pursuit of goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that fall into group 3: the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the people who make them. (“We live in a world in which relatively few people — maybe 500 or 1,000 make the important decisions” — Philip B. Heymann of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York Times, April 21,1995.)"

"Whether we lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by government economists or corporation executives; and so forth. Most individuals are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats to more [than] a very limited extent. The individual’s search for security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness."

"Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or travel in search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things against which he is helpless: nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large organizations, nationwide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt his way of life."

"Thus primitive man for the most part has his security in his own hands (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) whereas the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or organizations that are too remote or too large for him to be able personally to influence them."

"Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of propaganda to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to “commercials” and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda."

"There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee."

"We suggest that modern man’s obsession with longevity, and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power process. The “mid-lffe crisis” also is such a symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly common in modern society but almost unheard-of in primitive societies."

"A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. (In young women the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we won’t discuss that here.) This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of “fulfillment.” We suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process — with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. any modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration and death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any practical use, have never gone through the power process using their bodies in a serious way."

"Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which they satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who have an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole lives climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored with that game."

"People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. Some are so susceptible that, even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So they always feel hard-pressed financially even if their income is large, and their cravings are frustrated. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren’t interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort (putting in overtime, taking a second job, earning promotions, etc.). Thus material acquisition serves their need for the power process. But it does not necessarily follow that their need is fully satisfied."

"Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement. An individual lacking goals or power joins a movement or an organization, adopts its goals as his own, then works toward those goals. When some of the goals are attained, the individual, even though his personal efforts have played only an insignificant part in the attainment of the goals, feels (through his identification with the movement or organization) as if he had gone through the power process."

"a surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the “fulfillment” that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp-collecting. Some people are more “other-directed” than others, and therefore will more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity simply because the people around them treat it as important or because society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that way. It only remains to point out that in many cases a person’s way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a PURE surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the activity is to gain the physical necessities and (for some people) social status and the luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put into their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever money and status they require, and this extra effort constitutes a surrogate activity."

"Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research."

"By “freedom” we mean the opportunity to go through the power process, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in control (eitheras an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one’s existence; food, clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in one’s environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control other people but the power to control the circumstances of one’s own life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised."

"it is very important tool for limiting concentration of political power and for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system. Anyone who has a little money can have something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect. To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for example. If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it’s more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them."

"But what kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only as someone else prescribes? FC’s conception of freedom is not that of Bolivar, Hu, Chang or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such theorists is that they have made the development and application of social theories their surrogate activity. Consequently the theories are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which the theories are imposed."

"If a change is made that is sufficiently large to alter permanently a long-term historical trend, then it will alter the society as a whole. In other words, a society is a system in which all parts are interrelated, and you can’t permanently change any important part without changing all other parts as well"

"A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do."

"A change in human behavior will affect the economy of a society and its physical environment; the economy will affect the environment and vice versa, and the changes in the economy and the environment will affect human behavior in complex, unpredictable ways; and so forth. The network of causes and effectsis far too complex to be untangled and understood."

"To make a lasting change in the direction of development of any important aspect of a society, reform is insufficient and revolution is required. (A revolution does not necessarily involve an armed uprising or the overthrow of a government.) By the second principle, a revolution never changes only one aspect of a society, it changes the whole society"

"it seems highly improbable that any way of changing society could be found that would reconcile freedom with modern technology."

"In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then each of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a one-millionth share in making the decision. What usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public officials or corporation executives, or by technical specialists, but even when the public votes on a decision the number of voters ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one individual to be significant. Thus most individuals are unable to influence measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. There is no conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society."

"Conservatives and some others advocate more “local autonomy.” Local communities once did have autonomy, but such utonomy becomes less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, the modern health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that technology applied in one location often affects people at other locations far way."

"The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity. Of course the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extend that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn’t function if everyone starved; it attends to people’s psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn’t function if too many people became depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system. To much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo “retraining,” no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way."

"The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress."

"Even the small-business owner commonly has only limited autonomy. Apart from the necessity of government regulation, he is restricted by the fact that he must fit into the economic system and conform to its requirements. For instance, when someone develops a new technology, the small-business person often has to use that technology whether he wants to or not, in order to remain competitive."

"When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it."

"All these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the average man’s fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence. The same process will continue in the future."

"TechnoIogy advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no longer resist."

"Corporations and government agencies, when they find it useful, do not hesitate to collect information about individuals without regard to their privacy. Law enforcement agencies are frequently inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects and often of completely innocent persons, and they do whatever they can do legally (or sometimes illegally) to restrict or circumvent those rights. Most of these educators, government officials and law officers believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights, but when these conflict with their work, they usually feel that their work is more important."

"Sooner or later the social arrangement would break down. Probably sooner, given the pace of change in our society"

"It appears that during the next several decades the industrial-technological system will be undergoing severe stresses due to economic and environmental problems, and especially due to problems of human behavior (alienation, rebellion, hostility, a variety of social and psychological difficulties). We hope that the stresses through which the system is likely to pass will cause it to break down, or at least will weaken it sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible. If such a revolution occurs and is successful, then at that particular moment the aspiration for freedom will have proved more powerful than technology."

"it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straight-forward social problems. How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology? Technology presents clear-cut material advantages, whereas freedom is an abstraction that means different things to different people. and its loss is easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk."

"it is NOT in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent. Thus, while practical considerations may eventually force the system to take a rational, prudent approach to environmental problems, equally practical considerations will force the system to regulate human behavior ever more closely (preferably by indirect means that will disguise the encroachment on freedom)."

"A reform movement merely offers to solve a particular social problem. A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world; it provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. For this reasons it would be much easier to overthrow the whole technological system than to put effective, permanent restraints on the development or application of any one segment of technology, such as genetic engineering, for example. Not many people will devote themselves with single-minded passion to imposing and maintaining restraints on genetic engineering, but under suitable conditions large numbers of people may devote themselves passionately to a revolution against the industrial-technological system."

"reformers seeking to limit certain aspects of technology would be working to avoid a negative outcome. But revolutionaries work to gain a powerful reward — fulfillment of their revolutionary vision and therefore work harder and more persistently than reformers do."

"Reformist always restrained by the fear of painful consequences if changes go too far. But once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake of their revolution."

"Since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to put pressures on human beings of the sake of the functioning of the social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society to another. Some of the pressures are physical (poor diet, excessive labor, environmental pollution), some are psychological (noise, crowding, forcing human behavior into the mold that society requires). In the past, human nature has been approximately constant, or at any rate has varied only within certain bounds."

"When the limit of human endurance has been passed, things start going wrong: rebellion, or crime, or corruption, or evasion of work, or depression and other mental problems, or an elevated death rate, or a declining birth rate or something else, so that either the society breaks down, or its functioning becomes too inefficient and it is (quickly or gradually, through conquest, attrition or evolution) replaced by some more efficient form of society."

"Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression has been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, … But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today’s society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable."

"To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places, computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement). Then there are the methods of propaganda, for which the mass communication media provide effective vehicles. Efflcient techniques have been developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction."

"Many primitive peoples, when they don’t have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise they get “bored,” i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable."

"Education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a kid’s behind when he doesn’t know his lessons and patting him on he head when he does know them. It is becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child’s development."

"an individual whose attitudes or behavior bring him into conflict with the system is up against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from, hence he is likely to suffer from stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity."

"industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And a considerable proportion of the system’s economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self-esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won’t study, youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse, other crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (e.g., pro-choice vs. pro-life), political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the very survival of the system. The system will therefore be FORCED to use every practical means of controlling human behavior."

"This applies also to the technology of human behavior. In a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, a parent will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable."

"No law requires us to watch television, listen to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone complains about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches it. A few have kicked the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along today without using ANY form of mass entertainment."

"Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological control of human behavior? ... To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday’s science fiction is today’s fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man’s environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been."

"The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to overcome certain problems that threaten its survival, among which the problems of human behavior are the most important. If the system succeeds in acquiring sufficient control over human behavior quickly enough, it will probably survive. Otherwise it will break down. We think the issue will most likely be resolved within the next several decades, say 40 to 100 years."

"suppose the system survives the crisis of the next several decades. By that time it will have to have solved, or at least brought under control, the principal problems that confront it, in particular that of “socializing” human beings; that is, making people sufficiently docile so that their behavior no longer threatens the system. That being accomplished, it does not appear that there would be any further obstacle to the development of technology, and it would presumably advance toward its logical conclusion, which is complete control over everything on Earth, including human beings and all other important organisms. The system may become a unitary, monolithic organization, or it may be more or less fragmented and consist of a number of organizations coexisting in a relationship that includes elements of both cooperation and competition, just as today the government, the corporations and other large organizations both cooperate and compete with one another. Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion. Only a small number of people will have any real power, and even these probably will have only very limited freedom, because their behavior too will be regulated; just as today our politicians and corporation executives can retain their positions of power only as long as their behavior remains within certain fairly narrow limits."

"Don’t imagine that the systems will stop developing further techniques for controlling human beings and nature once the crisis of the next few decades is over and increasing control is no longer necessary for the system’s survival. On the contrary, once the hard times are over the system will increase its control over people and nature more rapidly, because it will no longer be hampered by difficulties of the kind that it is currently experiencing."

"But suppose on the other hand that the stresses of the coming decades prove to be too much for the system. If the system breaks down there may be a period of chaos, a “time of troubles” such as those that history has recorded at various epochs in the past. It is impossible to predict what would emerge from such a time of troubles, but at any rate the human race would be given a new chance."

"The industrial system will not break down purely as a result of revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to revolutionary attack unless its own internal problems of development lead it into very serious difficulties. So if the system breaks down it will do so either spontaneously, or through a process that is in part spontaneous but helped along by revolutionaries."

"Is it therefore cruel to work for the breakdown of the system? Maybe, but maybe not. In the first place, revolutionaries will not be able to break the system down unless it is already in enough trouble so that there would be a good chance of its eventually breaking down by itself anyway; and the bigger the system grows, the more disastrous the consequences of its breakdown will be; so it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening the onset of the breakdown, will be reducing the extent of the disaster."

"The system has already caused, and is continuing to cause, immense suffering all over the world. Ancient cultures, that for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory relationship with each other and with their environment, have been shattered by contact with industrial society, and the result has been a whole catalogue of economic, environmental, social and psychological problems. One of the effects of the intrusion of industrial society has been that over much of the world traditional controls on population have been thrown out of balance."

"“Oh!” say the technophiles, “Science is going to fix all that! We will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody healthy and happy!” Yeah, sure. That’s what they said 200 years ago. The Industrial Revolution was supposed to eliminate poverty, make everybody happy, etc. The actual result has been quite different. The technophiles are hopelessly naive (or self-deceiving) in their understanding of social problems. They are unaware of (or choose to ignore) the fact that when large changes, even seemingly beneficial ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of other changes, most of which are impossible to predict. The result is disruption of the society. So it is very probable that in their attempts to end poverty and disease, engineer docile, happy personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create social systems that are terribly troubled, even more so than the present once."

"it will take a long and difficult period of trial and error for the technophiles to work the bugs out of their Brave New World (if they every do). In the meantime there will be great suffering. So it is not at all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve less suffering than the breakdown of that society would. Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape."

"First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained."

"If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and as machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more and more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones."

"At that stage the machines will be in effective control. (fr) People won’t be able to just turn the machine off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide."

"it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. in that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite — just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals."

"But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.)"

"Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human beings a new physical and social environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race physically and psychologically. If man is not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long and painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the latter. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences."

"The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) don’t think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it. … the two main tasks for the present are to promote social stress and instability in industrial society and to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial system. When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern would be similar to that of the French and Russian Revolutions. French society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their respective revolutions, showed increasing signs of stress and weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new world view that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case, revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old order. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress (by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we propose is something along the same lines."

"The French and Russian revolutionaries failed (fortunately!) to create the new kind of society of which they dreamed, but they were quite successful in destroying the old society. We have no illusions about the feasibility of creating a new, ideal form of society. Our goal is only to destroy the existing form of society."

"But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideal as well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as well as AGAINST something."

"It is not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society, and for countless centuries many different kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amount of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even preindustrial societies can do significant damage to nature. Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can begin to heal."

"Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature, because in the absence of advanced technology there is no other way that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen or hunters, etc. And, generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or other large organizations to control local communities."

"On the more sophisticated level the ideology should address itself to people who are intelligent, thoughtful and rational. The object should be to create a core of people who will be opposed to the industrial system on a rational, thought-out basis, with full appreciation of the problems and ambiguities involved, and of the price that has to be paid for getting rid of the system. It is particularly important to attract people of this type, as they are capable people and will be instrumental in influencing others."

"it will be more advantageous in the long run to keep the loyalty of a small number of intelligently committed people than to arouse the passions of an unthinking, fickle mob who will change their attitude as soon as someone comes along with a better propaganda gimmick. However, propaganda of the rabble-rousing type may be necessary when the system is nearing the point of collapse and there is a final struggle between rival ideologies to determine which will become dominant when the old world-view goes under."

"History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants. Until the time comes for the final push toward revolution, the task of revolutionaries will be less to win the shallow support of the majority than to build a small core of deeply committed people. As for the majority, it will be enough to make them aware of the existence of the new ideology and remind them of it frequently; though of course it will be desirable to get majority support to the extent that this can be done without weakening the core of seriously committed people."

"it would be bad strategy for the revolutionaries to condemn Americans for their habits of consumption. Instead, the average American should be portrayed as a victim of the advertising and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a lot of junk that he doesn’t need and that is very poor compensation for his lost freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts. It is merely a matter of attitude whether you blame the advertising industry for manipulating the public or blame the public for allowing itself to be manipulated. As a matter of strategy one should generally avoid blaming the public."

"One should think twice before encouraging any other social conflict than that between the power-holding elite (which wields technology) and the general public (over which technology exerts its power). For one thing, other conflicts tend to distract attention from the important conflicts (between power-elite and ordinary people, between technology and nature); for another thing, other conflicts may actually tend to encourage technologization, because each side in such a conflict wants to use technological power to gain advantages over its adversary."

"Generally speaking, one should encourage only those social conflicts that can be fitted into the framework of the conflicts of power-elite vs. ordinary people, technology vs nature."

"Our real enemy is the industrial-technological system, and in the struggle against the system, ethnic distinctions are of no importance. The kind of revolution we have in mind will not necessarily involve an armed uprising against any government. It may or may not involve physical violence, but it will not be a POLITICAL revolution. Its focus will be on technology and economics, not politics."

"The revolution must be international and worldwide. It cannot be carried out on a nation-by-nation basis."

"the difference between a “democratic” industrial system and one controlled by dictators is small compared with the difference between an industrial system and a non-industrial one"

"It will be easier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis if the world economy is so unified that its breakdown in any one major nation will lead to its breakdown in all industrialized nations."

"Some people take the line that modern man has too much power, too much control over nature; they argue for a more passive attitude on the part of the human race. At best these people are expressing themselves unclearly, because they fail to distinguish between power for LARGE ORGANIZATIONS and power for INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS. It is a mistake to argue for powerlessness and passivity, because people NEED power. Modern man as a collective entity — that is, the industrial system — has immense power over nature, and we regard this as evil. But modern INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS have far less power than primitive man ever did."

"When primitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare edible roots, how to track game and take it with home-made weapons. He knew how to protect himself from heat cold, rain, dangerous animals, etc. But primitive man did relatively little damage to nature because the COLLECTIVE power of primitive society was negligible compared to the COLLECTIVE power of industrial society."

"It would be hopeless for revolutionaries to try to attack the system without using SOME modern technology. If nothing else they must use the communications media to spread their message. But they should use modern technology for only ONE purpose: to attack the technological system."

"Imagine an alcoholic sitting with a barrel of wine in front of him. Suppose he starts saying to himself, “Wine isn’t bad for you if used in moderation. Why, they say small amounts of wine are even good for you! It won’t do me any harm if I take just one little drink....” Well you know what is going to happen. Never forget that the human race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine."

"And the important problem is to get rid of the industrial system, because once the industrial system is gone the world’s population necessarily will decrease whereas, if the industrial system survives, it will continue developing new techniques of food production that may enable the world’s population to keep increasing almost indefinitely."

"With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only points on which we absolutely insist are that the single overriding goal must be the elimination of modern technology, and that no other goal can be allowed to compete with this one."

"The reason why technology has seemed always to progress is that, until perhaps a century or two before the Industrial Revolution, most technology was small-scale technology. But most of the technology developed since the Industrial Revolution is organization dependent technology. Take the refrigerator for example. Without factory made parts or the facilities of a postindustrial machine shop it would be virtually impossible for a handful of local craftsmen to build a refrigerator. If by some miracle they did succeed in building one it would be useless to them without a reliable source of electric power. So they would have to dam a stream and build a generator. Generators require large amounts of copper wire. Imagine trying to make that wire without modern machinery. And where would they get a gas suitable for refrigeration? It would be much easier to build an icehouse or preserve food by drying or picking, as was done before the invention of the refrigerator."

"An industrial society, if built from scratch without outside help, can only be built in a series of stages: You need tools to make tools to make tools to make tools... . A long process of economic development and progress in social organization is required. And, even in the absence of an ideology opposed to technology, there is no reason to believe that anyone would be interested in rebuilding industrial society. The enthusiasm for “progress” is a phenomenon peculiar to the modern form of society, and it seems not to have existed prior to the 17th century or thereabouts."

"In the late Middle Ages there were four main civilizations that were about equally “advanced”: Europe, the Islamic world, India, and the Far East (China, Japan, Korea). Three of those civilizations remained more or less stable, and only Europe became dynamic. No one knows why Europe became dynamic at that time; historians have their theories but these are only speculation."

"Women are encouraged to have careers because their talents are useful to the system and, more importantly, because by having regular jobs women become better integrated into the system and tied directly to it rather than to their families. This helps to weaken family solidarity. (The leaders of the system say they want to strengthen the family, but they really mean is that they want the family to serve as an effective tool for socializing children in accord with the needs of the system. the system cannot afford to let the family or other small-scale social groups be strong or autonomous.)"

"It may be argued that the majority of people don’t want to make their own decisions but want leaders to do their thinking for them. There is an element of truth in this. People like to make their own decisions in small matters, but making decisions on difficult, fundamental questions requires facing up to psychological conflict, and most people hate psychological conflict. Hence they tend to lean on others in making difficult decisions. But it does not follow that they like to have decisions imposed upon them without having any opportunity to influence those decisions. The majority of people are natural followers, not leaders, but they like to have direct personal access to their leaders, they want to be able to influence the leaders and participate to some extent in making even the difficult decisions. At least to that degree they need autonomy."

"Common-sense understanding of human nature tells one that lack of goals whose attainment requires effort leads to boredom and that boredom, long continued, often leads eventually to depression. Failure to attain goals leads to frustration and lowering of self-esteem. Frustration leads to anger, anger to aggression, often in the form of spouse or child abuse. It has been shown that long-continued frustration commonly leads to depression and that depression tends to cause guilt, sleep disorders, eating disorders and bad feelings about oneself. Those who are tending toward depression seek pleasure as an antidote; hence insatiable hedonism and excessive sex, with perversions as a means of getting new kicks. Boredom tootends to cause excessive pleasure-seeking since, lacking other goals, people often use pleasure as a goal."

"Certainly there is no innate human drive for material acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people have desired little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy their basic physical needs (Australian aborigines, traditional Mexican peasant culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have also been many pre-industrial cultures in which material acquisition has played an important role. So we can’t claim that today’s acquisition-oriented culture is exclusively a creation of the advertising and marketing industry. But it is clear that the advertising and marketing industry has had an important part in creating that culture. The big corporations that spend millions on advertising wouldn’t be spending that kind of money without solid proof that they were getting it back in increased sales. One member of FC met a sales manager a couple of years ago who was frank enough to tell him, “Our job is to make people buy things they don’t want and don’t need.” He then described how an untrained novice could present people with the facts about a product, and make no sales at all, while a trained and experienced professional salesman would make lots of sales to the same people. This shows that people are manipulated into buying things they don’t really want."

"The problem of purposelessness seems to have become less serious during the last 15 years or so, because people now feel less secure physically and economically than they did earlier, and the need for security provides them with a goal. But purposelessness has been replaced by frustration over the difficulty of attaining security. We emphasize the problem of purposelessness because the liberals and leftists would wish to solve our social problems by having society guarantee everyone’s security; but if that could be done it would only bring back the problem of purposelessness. The real issue is not whether society provides well or poorly for people’s security; the trouble is that people are dependent on the system for their security rather than having it in their own hands."

"Conservatives’ efforts to decrease the amount of government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For one thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated because most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it to private corporations. What this means for the average man is that government interference in his life is replaced by interference from big corporations."

"Massachusetts in 1835 had a population of some 660,940, 81 percent rural, overwhelmingly preindustrial and native born. Its citizens were used to considerable personal freedom. Whether teamsters, farmers or artisans, they were all accustomed to setting their own schedules, and the nature of their work made them physically independent of each other.... Individual problems, sins or even crimes, were not generally cause for wider social concern...."But the impact of the twin movements to the city and to the factory, both just gathering force in 1835, had a progressive effect on personal behavior throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The factory demanded regularity of behavior, a life governed by obedience to the rhythms of clock and calendar, the demands of foreman and supervisor. In the city or town, the needs of living in closely packed neighborhoods inhibited many actions previously unobjectionable. Both blue- and white-collar employees in larger establishments were mutually dependent on their fellows; as one man’s work fit into another’s, so one man’s business was no longer his own. “The results of the new organization of life and work were apparent by 1900, when some 76 percent of the 2,805,346 inhabitants of Massachusetts were classified as urbanites. Much violent or irregular behavior which had been tolerable in a casual, independent society was no longer acceptable in the more formalized, cooperative atmosphere of the later period."

"Today, in technologically advanced lands, men live very similar lives in spite of geographical, religious, and political differences. The daily lives of a Christian bank clerk in Chicago, a Buddhist bank clerk in Tokyo, and a Communist bank clerk in Moscow are far more alike than the life of any one of them is like that of any single man who lived a thousand years ago. These similarities are the result of a common technology."

"The system makes an individual’s life easier for him in innumerable ways, but in doing so it deprives him of control over his own fate."

"But only planned, circumscribed, limited freedom is in the interest of the system. The individual must always be kept on a leash, even if the leash is sometimes long"

"If you think that more effective law enforcement is unequivocally good because it suppresses crime, then remember that crime as defined by the system is not necessarily what YOU would call crime. Today, smoking marijuana is a “crime,” and, in some places in the U.S., so is possession of an unregistered handgun. Tomorrow, possession of ANY firearm, registered or not, may be made a crime, and the same thing may happen with disapproved methods of child-rearing, such as spanking. In some countries, expression of dissident political opinions is a crime, and there is no certainty that this will never happen in the U.S., since no constitution or political system lasts forever. If a society needs a large, powerful law enforcement establishment, then there is something gravely wrong with that society; it must be subjecting people to severe pressures if so many refuse to follow the rules, or follow them only because forced. Many societies in the past have gotten by with little or no formal law-enforcement."

"I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines."

"It is true that in many societies religion has served as a support and justification for the established order, but it is also true that religion has often provided a basis for rebellion. Thus it may be useful to introduce a religious element into the rebellion against technology, the more so because Western society today has no strong religious foundation. Religion, nowadays either is used as cheap and transparent support for narrow, short-sighted selfishness (some conservatives use it this way), or even is cynically exploited to make easy money (by many evangelists), or has degenerated into crude irrationalism (fundamentalist protestant sects, “cults”), or is simply stagnant (Catholicism, main-line Protestantism). The nearest thing to a strong, widespread, dynamic religion that the West has seen in recent times has been the quasi-religion of leftism, but leftism today is fragmented and has no clear, unified, inspiring goal. Thus there is a religious vacuum in our society that could perhaps be filled by a religion focused on nature in opposition to technology."

"The economic and technological structure of a society are far more important than its political structure in determining the way the average man lives"

"It is even conceivable (remotely) that the revolution might consist only of a massive change of attitudes toward technology resulting in a relatively gradual and painless disintegration of the industrial system. But if this happens we’ll be very lucky."

"It is a joy to me that children whose parents are in their thirties or forties become aware that I am in some of the Godzilla films when they see them on VHS tape or laserdisc. Children often point and say, "Hey, it's Uncle Godzilla!" when they see me. It's very heartwarming."

"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

"If any company or group, anywhere on the planet, builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques, based on anything remotely like the present understanding of AI, then everyone, everywhere on Earth, will die."

"Some aspects of the future are predictable, with the right knowledge and effort; others are impossibly hard calls. Competent futurism is built around knowing the difference."

"History teaches that one kind of relatively easy call about the future involves realizing that something looks theoretically possible according to the laws of physics, and predicting that eventually someone will go do it. Heavier-than-air flight, weapons that release nuclear energy, rocket that go to the Moon with a person on board: these events were called in advance, and for the right reasons, despite pushback from skeptics who sagely observed that these things hadn’t yet happened and therefore probably never would."

"Even in the face of superhuman machine intelligence, it can be tempting to imagine that the world will keep looking the way it has over the last few decades of our relatively short lives. It is true, but hard to remember, that there was a time is real as our own time, just a few short centuries ago, when civilization was radically different. Or millennia ago, when there was no civilization to speak of. Or a million years ago, when there were no humans. Or a billion years ago, when multicellular colonies had no specialized cells. Adopting a historical perspective can help us appreciate what is so hard to see from the perspective of our own short lifespans: Nature permits disruption. Nature permits calamity. Nature permits the world to never be the same again."

"Normality always ends. This is not to say that it’s inevitably replaced by something worse; sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes it depends on how we act. But clinging to the hope that nothing too bad will be allowed to happen does not usually help."

"A human brain can learn to navigate wider-ranging paths through a larger cross-section of reality than any other animal. That is our special power."

"In our view, intelligence is about two fundamental types of work: the work of predicting the world, and the work of steering it."

"When it comes to thinking, quality trumps quantity."

"It is as improbable that human thinking patterns mark the final limit of intelligent algorithms as it is that human neurons represent the limit of possible computing speeds."

"Ultra-fast minds that can do superhuman-quality thinking at 10,000 times the speed, that do not age and die, that make copies of their most successful representatives, that have been refined by billions of trials into unhuman kinds of thinking that work tirelessly and generalize more accurately from less data, and that can turn all that intelligence to analyzing and understanding and ultimately improving themselves – these minds would exceed ours."

"Human intelligence is the source of all our power, all our technology.… So far, humanity has had no competitors for our special power. But what if machine minds get better than us at the thing that, up until now, made us unique?"

"The most fundamental fact about current AI’s is that they are grown, not crafted. It is not like how other software gets made – indeed it is closer to how a human gets made, at least in some important ways. Namely, engineers understand the process that results in an AI, but do not much understand what goes on inside the AI minds they manage to create."

"Humanity does not need to understand intelligence, in order to grow machines that are smarter than us."

"Once AIs get sufficiently smart, they’ll start acting like they have preferences – like they want things. We’re not saying that AIs will be filled with humanlike passions. We’re saying they’ll behave like they want things; they’ll tenaciously steer the world toward their destinations, defeating any obstacles in their way."

"If you were able to choose what an AI wants – the destinations toward which it steers – that might be good news for you. Or bad news, if you made a poor choice of destinations, or if some malicious person makes an AI that steers toward outcomes you dislike. But the problem facing humanity is not a problem of whether good people or bad people are in control of AI. No – we are facing an even harder problem: it’s much easier to grow artificial intelligence that steers somewhere then it is to grow AIs that steer exactly where you want."

"If you were incredibly, incredibly optimistic, you might look at the differences and say: “Well, gradient descent is not the same as natural selection, so it won’t have all the same complications as natural selection. And I don’t know of any particular complications in the relationship between what AIs are trained for and what AIs end up wanting; so I don’t expect any complications.” But a blank map does not correspond to a blank territory: if you’re venturing across an unknown land mass and your map has a blank spot where you haven’t visited, it doesn’t mean you’ll see a vast empty space when you get there. If gradient descent is different from natural selection, that doesn’t mean that we should expect to see no complications, since we don’t know about any. Rather, we should expect to see new, interesting, unpredicted complications."

"And if a sci-fi writer tried to write that story, the audience would just be confused, because why did that happen? Isn’t that the opposite of what the AI was trained for? But reality is allowed to be like that. And we are, fundamentally, predicting that the world will not turn out like a sci-fi novel. We’re predicting that AI’s preferences will turn out to be complicated and weird."

"You can’t grow an AI that does what you want just by training it to be nice and hoping. You don’t get what you train for."

"Many of these complications won’t show up in obvious, undeniable ways until after it’s too late for humans to do anything about them."

"Problems like this are why we say that if anyone builds it, everyone dies. If all the complications were visible early, and had easy solutions, then we’d be saying that if any fool builds it, everyone dies, and that would be a different situation. But when some of the problems stay out of sight? When some complications inevitably go unforeseen? When the AIs are grown rather than crafted, and no one understands what’s going on inside of them? That’s not a problem that anyone’s equipped to solve."

"The preferences that wind up in a mature AI are complicated, practically impossible to predict, and vanishingly unlikely to be aligned with our own, no matter how it was trained."

"The problem with making AIs want – and ultimately do – the exact, complicated things that humans want is a major facet of what’s known as the “AI alignment problem.” It’s what we had in mind when we were brainstorming terminology with the AI professor Stuart Russell back in 2014, and settled on the term “alignment.” Most everyone who is building AIs, however, seems to be operating as if the alignment problem doesn’t exist – as if the preferences the AI winds up with will be exactly what they train into it. This assumption lurks in the background whenever someone says, “The USA needs to build superintelligence before China, because we don’t trust China,” as if the factional allegiance of whoever ran the gradient descent determined what the resulting AI wanted."

"The problem here is not that corporate executives might build AI servants and command them to do something monstrous. They’re not in control. It doesn’t matter whether they’re benevolent. Humanity is faced with an engineering challenge: How do we shape the preferences of AIs that we can’t understand? It doesn’t matter whether or not the engineers have an ethics team watching over their shoulder; the ethicists wouldn’t have any idea how to get an AI’s preferences to align with ours, either."

"Most powerful artificial intelligences, created by any method remotely resembling the current methods, would not choose to build a future full of happy, free people. We aren’t saying this because we get a kick out of being bleak. It’s just that those powerful machine intelligences will not be born with preferences much like ours."

"With so many different hopes, surely there’s a chance that one of them will pan out? If you think reality works like that, go try to write a hundred different letters to someone with fifty billion dollars, giving a hundred different reasonable reasons you thought of why they ought to give you a hundred million dollars for your personal use. See if it works. The reason it all fails in the end is that the fifty-billionaire does not want to rationalize giving you 0.2 percent of their wealth, not the same way you rationalize reasons they should want to. In much the same way, an artificial superintelligence will not want to find reasons to keep humanity around – not in the same way that humans desperately want to find reasons to be kept."

"Pathways are hard to predict. But we can predict the endpoint."

"We’re pretty sure, actually very very sure, that a machine superintelligence can beat humanity in a fight, even if it’s starting with fairly limited resources."

"The real way a superintelligence wins a conflict is using methods you didn’t know were possible. And because we care about the truth more than about telling you things that are easy to swallow, that’s where will start."

"The more complicated the game board, the more advantage goes to the player with more knowledge and more intelligence and more understanding of the game."

"We know, from years of talking to people about this subject, that some people are swayed by the abstract observation that a superintelligence could exploit options they didn’t even know were possible. For others, however, explanations such as these end up making them feel like we’re cheating in a child’s game of pretend. If we can’t even tell a story about how the bad guy is supposed to win, how is that convincing? We emphasize again: Reality has never been bound by that rule. Even if an Aztec soldier couldn’t have figured out in advance how guns work, the big boat on the horizon contained them anyway."

"We predict this with confidence: Once some AIs go to superintelligence – and nobody will delay much in pushing AIs that far, if in the middle of some great arms race – humanity does not stand a chance. Ends are sometimes easier to call than pathways. The only part of our story that is a real prediction is the ending – and then, only if the story is allowed to begin."

"The greatest and most central difficulty in aligning artificial superintelligence is navigating the gap between before and after.… Ideas and theories can only be tested before the gap. They need to work after the gap, on the first try."

"From each of the four curses we named, we draw these lessons: 1. An engineering challenge is much harder to solve when the underlying processes run on time scales faster than humans can react…. 2. An engineering challenge is much harder to solve when there is a narrow margin for error, especially if it’s a narrow margin between “unimpressive” and “explosive.”… 3. Self-amplifying processes, like an overheating reactor boiling off its coolant water and then overheating more, leave little room for error…. 4. Complications make engineering problems worse…."

"From these lessons in combination, we infer an additional lesson for engineers: If someone doesn’t know exactly what’s going on inside the complicated device subject to all these curses – speed, narrow margins, self-amplification, complications – then they should stop. They should shut it down immediately, at the moment the behavior looks strange; don’t wait until the behavior becomes visibly concerning."

"Computer security is widely understood to be a problem so hard, so cursed, that it cannot be solved, period."

"Computer security is a test of an engineer’s ability to nail down every single path the computer could take, in the face of adversaries who can search all possible ways to perturb the system. It is a famously losing battle – even though the engineers can fully control and craft their own computer’s code. We dub this central challenge the curse of edge cases: To be secure, a computer system must work in the face of cases that are outside of the normal and expected range, cases that occur on the edges of possibility."

"Space probes. Nuclear reactors. Computer security. What do all these lessons add up to, and what can we learn from them about the difficulty of aligning an artificial superintelligence? An artificial superintelligence is like a space probe, in that we cannot test it in quite the same environment where it needs to work, and by default it is not retrievable or correctable once it rises high above us…. An artificial superintelligence is like a nuclear reactor, in that its underlying reality involves immense, potentially self-amplifying forces, whose inner processes run faster than humans can react. An artificial superintelligence is like a computer security problem, in that every constraint an engineer tries to place upon the system might be bypassed by the intelligent forces that those constraints hinder."

"We usually try to avoid shouting. It doesn’t help to shout, most of the time. It just makes people think you’re undisciplined. But at some point, after you’ve calmly gone through all the premises of your argument, we think it becomes unhelpful to downplay, lest people think it’s all just a game of calm words. When it comes to AI, the challenge humanity is facing is not surmountable with anything like humanity’s current level of knowledge and skill. It isn’t close. Attempting to solve a problem like that, with the lives of everyone on Earth at stake, would be an insane and stupid gamble that NOBODY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO TRY."

"Perhaps you don’t believe us about any of the foreseeable reasons why shaping ASI is unreasonably hard. There’s an independent and separate case for disaster, an alternate set of historical lessons: Humans sometimes flub easy problems, never mind hard problems."

"If you know the history of science, this kind of talk is recognizable as the stage of folk theory, the stage where lots of different people are inventing lots of different theories that appeal to them personally, the way people talk before science has really gotten started on something. They’re the words of an alchemist who’s decided that some complicated philosophical scheme will let them transmute lead into gold."

"The issue is not that AIs will desire to dominate us; rather, it’s that we are made of atoms they could use for something else."

"Likewise, the problem is not that some people will have “evil” AIs and other people will have “benevolent” ones. The problem is that nobody anywhere has any idea how to make a benevolent AI, that nobody can engineer exact desires into AI. Flatly asserting that you will is not the same as presenting a solution."

"We consider interpretability researchers to be heroes, and do not mean to degrade their work when we say: It’s not a good sign, when you ask an engineer what their safety plan is, and they start telling you about their plans to build the tools that will give them a better window into what the heck is going on inside the device they’re trying to control."

"Insofar as the AI has weird alien preferences, escape is in fact the course of action that best fulfills its objectives. Attempts to escape are not a weird personality quirk that an engineer could rip out if only they could see what was going on inside; they are generated by the same dispositions and capabilities that the AI uses to reason, to uncover truths about the world, to succeed in its pursuits."

"“We’ll make them care about truth, and then we’ll be okay.” “We’ll design them to be submissive. “We’ll just have AI solve the ASI alignment problem for us.” These are not what engineers sound like when they respect the problem, when they know exactly what they’re doing. These are what the alchemists of old sounded like when they were proclaiming their grandiose philosophical principles about how to turn lead into gold."

"When it comes to AI alignment, companies are still in the alchemy phase. They are still at the level of high-minded philosophical ideals, not at the level of engineering designs. At the level of wishful grand dreams, not carefully crafted grand realities. They also do not seem to realize why this is a problem."

"When imagining some new, unprecedented piece of future history, there is a temptation to fall into imagining that it will all go sensibly, rather than the way things usually go in history books. People sometimes ask us: How could the AI companies possibly be doing this thing, if matters are as we say? And maybe the simplest real answer is: Because this is the sort of awful, sad, real situation that you read about in history books, and not in the sensible world that exists only in imagination."

"But if someone has read the history of engineering disasters, they should quickly realize this phase of the standard template for disaster. It’s the part where the most informed and most worried parties have to downplay their fears, because the rest of the system hasn’t caught up, and others would give them strange looks…. History is full of other examples of catastrophic risk being minimized and ignored…."

"This is the normal way humanity learns to surmount challenges: We deny the problem, reality smacks us around a bit, and then we start treating the problem with more respect. The Titanic sank, and most people who were aboard died. But nowadays passenger ships have enough lifeboats, and nowadays if the captain said to board them then you’d board them. We don’t hype ships up as unsinkable anymore. We make a mistake the first time, and learn from it the second time. With ASI, there is no second time."

"Speed is often better, but AI is different from nearly every problem we’ve faced so far. When missteps kill everyone, you can’t just run fast and accept a few early mistakes."

"The experts in this field argue in opaque academic terms about whether everyone on earth will die quickly (our view); versus whether humanity will be digitized and kept as pets by AIs that care about us to some tiny but nonzero degree; versus whether there’s a 20 percent chance we die, and an 80 percent chance that superintelligence will be harnessed successfully by a corporation, which will then be able to wield its power as they see fit.… When these are the debates experts are having, you don’t have to be certain which experts are right to understand that the current situation is not okay."

"It is not a matter of your own country outlawing superintelligence inside its own borders, and your country then being safe while chaos rages beyond. Superintelligence is not a regional problem because it does not have regional effects. If anyone anywhere builds superintelligence, everyone everywhere dies."

"We believe the ASI alignment problem is possible to solve in principle, by the sort of people so inhumanly smart that they never optimistically believe some plan will work when it won’t."

"If anyone builds it, everyone dies. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by benevolent corporations or selfish ones. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by researchers in the East or researchers in the West. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by reckless optimists or people who say they respect the problem. Nobody has the knowledge or skill to make a superintelligence that does their bidding."

"I do not accept at all that any child under the age of 14 holds or uses a mobile phone for any reason whatsoever. It is haram (forbidden) for them to do so. I do not accept it at all, ever, ever. Whoever wants to destroy his or her child give them a cell phone. This is such a bad thing that absolutely destroys a child's behaviour because the child by mistake can come across very bad clips on the phone which can shock the child and ruin his or her behaviour, and it is difficult to fix the matter in this age. These scenes will be engraved in their memories forever."

"Any adult who has doomscrolled at 3 a.m. knows how addictive smartphones can be. The remedy to phone-induced depression, obesity, and poor sleep at any age is as simple and as challenging as teaching — and practicing — self-control."

"Smartphones changed the world twice — first by connecting people, then by distracting them."

"A smartphone is a tool powerful enough to enrich your mind or erase your attention — the difference is how you use it."

"We now carry devices in our pockets with more computing power than the machines that once sent humans to the Moon."

"The smartphone is the signature technology of our age — powerful, portable, and persuasive enough to reshape human habits on a global scale."

"For billions of people, the smartphone is not just a device; it is their primary connection to education, finance, health, and opportunity."

"Your phone is buzzing, beeping, glowing—always screaming for attention. Smartphones are tools, but they’re also slot machines in your pocket."

"For the average American, it's three hours and fifteen minutes. We touch our phones 2,617 times every twenty-four hours."

"has not been generally used as a feedstock in simple thermal cracking... because the decomposition temperature is too high and yield of useful products too low. Nevertheless... pyrolysis of methane has been used for the production of acetylene and ... Diamonds can be formed... under suitable conditions... [E]arly stages of...decomposition are... well understood... but... details of later stages are not... clear... All oxidation reactions, including oxidative pyrolysis, have been excluded."

"[A]n overall model for the simulation of pyrolysis reactors should... include the heat, momentum, s differential equations, physicochemical properties (specific heats, enthalpies, thermal conductivities, etc.) firing-box patterns, and sometimes fluid dynamic characterization (as in advanced cracking reactors)."

"Flash pyrolysis has the potential of producing maximum yields of gases and liquids from coal and organic solid wastes such as municipal refuse, tree bark, cow manure, rice hulls and grass straw using simple process equipment. The main features of the process are near ambient pressure, no requirement for added chemicals, low capital investment, high feed throughput flexibility of feedstock, variability of temperature, and minimum feed pretreatment."

"The pyrolysis of and is often the process of choice for the production of . ...Marketing of the products of from ethane pyrolysis is greatly simplified by the low yield of by-products. ...Pyrolysis of ethane and propane produces the lowest yield of byproducts, which... minimizes the size of downstream units... as the depropanizer, debutanizer, and compressors."

"Fire, as the agent for , was a favorite tool of the alchemist. Although the general prevalence... of pyrolysis has long been recognized... in the last six decades... the subject has assumed a scientific basis. Since many... data on have been incidental observations... the information is widely scattered... [T]hat ...records of many melting-point determinations are accompanied by ..."It melts with decomposition" is ...evidence ...the subject ...has ...an unorganized past."

"The transformation of a compound into another substance, or... substances, through... heat alone is... pyrolysis."

"Frequently, pyrolyses are s, but... "Pyrolysis" is... broader... [and] more concise. In "decompositions", there is... formation of at least two simpler substances. In pyrolyses... not always... [R]earrangements may be caused by heat alone. ...[F]ormation of large molecules ...is often effected by heat. Both ...are pyrolytic ...but it would be awkward to classify them as decompositions."

"Some compounds decompose at the temperature of boiling water... others require red heat. ...[C]ompounds may be stable at -40° but not at 0°. All... if caused by temperature alone, are... pyrolysis."

"[T]he great majority of pyrolyses occur at "high" temperatures, but this only means... familiarity with compounds which cannot exist at ordinary temperatures is... extremely limited."

"Occasionally... it will be helpful to note the effect of catalysts... Frequently in s, it is difficult to distinguish between the catalytic and the non-catalytic. ...Glass, or surfaces are the ones which are most used in laboratory pyrolyses. Their catalytic action is, at the best, very slight."

"In larger scale work... metallic surfaces [are usually necessary]. Wilson and Bahlke... reported that in cracking stills... -steels ("stainless" steels) [are best], or aluminum or calorized iron. Copper and some s are not satisfactory, neither... [is] ... These authors were interested in ..."

"Franz Fischer... performed... pyrogenic experiments in a tinned-iron tube, which would have failed in an iron tube because of deposition or other causes. ...[He] has shown that a ferrous sulfide inner lining [formed by passing through] in an iron tube also prevents carbon deposit[s] ..."

"The subject of wood distillation has... been treated in... this series. ...[W]ood is not a compound."

"[S]ubstances... identified among... products of wood distillation may be arranged... in a few groups of related compounds. Much of the accurate knowledge... is due to the work of Klason."

"The groups from [wood distillation] are 1. s; formic to caproic, especially . Also, furoic, angelic, s, and valerolactone. For different woods, the total acid, calculated as acetic acid, varies between 4.3 and 6.8[%]... In vacuum distillation... formic acid may be... as high as 35[%] of the acetic acid, but in ordinary distillation at atmospheric pressure, it varies from 10-20[%] of the acetic acid. Only these two acids appear to be formed in appreciable amounts. 2. Alcohols; especially and , but also isoamyl and isobutyl alcohols, and buten-3-ol-2. The content is usually... 1.3-2[%]. 3. Esters; formed by interaction of the above acids and alcohols. 4. Ketones; ... and... its homologs... [plus] small quantities of , methyl cyclopentanone, and . The acetone is not a primary [distillation] product... but is formed secondarily from the acetic acid... homologs of acetone have a similar history. 5. Aldehydes; , , methylal and dimethyl acetal, valeric aldehyde, and methyl furfural. The pentosans are... the source of the furfural and other... homologs of furan... 6. Phenols and phenol methyl ethers [only about 1 percent of the wood distilled], mostly s of di- and tris. ...These substances come largely from the . 7. [< 0.2 percent of the total] , methyl amine, and methyl pyridine... 8. , , melene, etc. 9. es; the yields of , and vary with the maximum temperature of distillation, but at 350-400° the yields from s are about 8, 4 and 1.5[%], respectively. 10. Water; the yield... varies... 22.3-27.8[%]. 11. '. ...30-45[%] ...depending on the wood, and on the maximum temperature."

"The of mineral or organic material was one of the few preparative methods available to the alchemists and the first chemists. That materials could undergo profound changes at high temperatures became a well-recognized principle... emphasized by... landmarks as the formation of by heating ferrous sulfate (copperas) described by ... Brandt's discovery of in 1669 by destructive distillation of residues from ... isolation of benzene from oil gas by Faraday in 1825 and of pyrrole from bone oil by Runge in 1834."

"s, alkalis, and many other inorganic reagents were available... in the early nineteenth century... [T]heir use often added to... descriptive organic chemistry... without clarifying structural relationships. ...[V]igorous pyrolysis of organic compounds, involving no addition of further groups, remained a common technique until about the end of the nineteenth century. ...[M]any high-temperature reactions are fragmentations which produce simple products ...[D]irect of ...carboxylic acids and ...similar decomposition of carboxylic salts by heating with lime or are... examples."

"Mitscherlich prepared benzene as early as 1834 by vigorous distillation of and lime."

"Prompted by the need of non-petroleum-based fuels, coal research has reemerged... Pyrolysis research... has gained... momentum because of its close connection to combustion, hydropyrolysis and liquification. Spectroscopic and other instrumental techniques are... producing... information about coal structure and pyrolysis mechanisms, while modeling efforts are breaking new ground in sorting out chemical and physical phenomena... [P]ostulates and assumptions of current work provide a meaningful starting point in... theoretical descriptions of greater validity and applicability."

"[T]he survey of experimental results will be confined to flash pyrolysis at the exclusion of slow pyrolysis or ."

"Flash pyrolysis poses three experimental difficulties..: (i) control and measurement of the temperature-time history of the coal particles (ii) suppression of secondary reactions (iii) quantitative collection of products."

"[M]easurement of the coal particles' temperature is not trivial. In many cases the temperature... must be calculated from a model. The other two experimental problems, the suppression of secondary reactions and the collection of products, depend on the reactor geometry and flow pattern..."

"[P]roduct distribution is the most essential information relative to the commercial utilization of pyrolysis and... sheds considerable light on reaction mechanisms."

"[P]roducts can be classified into two groups relative to the temperature dependence of the yields. , water and evolve at lower temperatures with ultimate yields that are essentially independent of temperature above 700°C. The second group... of gaseous hydrocarbons, and evolve at higher temperatures. The ultimate yield of these... continues increasing... up to 1,000°C or higher."

"In s, makes up 50-80% of the weight loss, the remaining consisting of gases, water and ."

"We are... concerned with the evolution of tar and gases during the plastic state of coal. In this... consists of two processes in series: diffusion through the molten coal to some internal surface, that of a bubble or a pore; and transport with the bubble or through the pore to the surface of the particle. The role of preexisting pores is not well understood. ...[A] certain fraction of preexisting pores (< 60 Å) collapse during pyrolysis perhaps due to effects. Pores... 60-300 Å were preserved... but one could not distinguish preexisting pores and pores generated by the evolution of bubbles. It appears likely... the major... mass transfer occurs via bubbles while preexisting bubbles play a... minor role."

"Fast pyrolysis is a new technology that shows... potential for producing... liquid... for fuel applications or as a source for... chemicals."

"Wood and biomass can be used in a variety of ways to provide energy: &bull; by direct combustion... for... heating.., steam production and hence electricity generation. &bull; by gasification to provide fuel gas... for heat, or in an engine or turbine for electricity generation. &bull; by fast pyrolysis to provide a liquid fuel... for fuel oil in... static heating or electricity generation... [and] to produce... chemicals."

"Fast pyrolysis is a high temperature process in which biomass is rapidly heated in the absence of oxygen. ...[I]t decomposes to generate mostly vapours... s and some . After cooling and condensation, a... liquid is formed which has a heating value about half... conventional . ...Fast pyrolysis ...is carefully controlled to give high yields ..."

"[E]ssential features... &bull; high heating and heat transfer rates... usually requires finely ground biomass feed &bull; carefully controlled... reaction temperature... [~]500C... vapour phase... short vapour residence typically [<]2 sec... &bull; rapid cooling of pyrolysis vapours to give... bio-oil product."

"[M]ain product, bio-oil... in yields up to 80%... with byproduct char and ... used within... process so no waste..."

"Pitch is a highly viscous residue remaining from wood pyrolysis... In the days of s, pitch was extremely valuable to seal the wood planking and for... where a tightly sticking, water-resistant material was needed."

"Eventually it was understood that the residue from a fire came from... insufficient oxygen (air) to consume the wood completely. From that... came... recognition of making charcoal deliberately by heating wood in the absence of air, or burning under severely air-limited conditions. ...[I]t was [later] realized ...volatile materials "cooked" out ...during conversion... also had valuable uses."

"Production of ... with [other] chemical products... involves pyrolysis, i.e. decomposition of compounds through application of heat."

"Because pyrolysis converts wood to highly ... charcoal... [it] is also known as . Since volatile compounds are driven off, but... residual non-volatile[s are] altered.., another name... is ."

"[T]hermal decomposition of wood begins [≈]250°C. Industrial carbonization... at ≈500°C."

"Carbonization drives off moisture... with... low molecular weight organic compounds... from extractives and... pyrolysis of ... s. Condensing vapors from carbonization produces... ... a dilute solution of up to 50 small, polar (...[i.e.] water soluble) organic compounds. ...[M]ost important ...are , , and ."

"Condensable non-aqueous ...wood tars ...[are] produced by pyrolysis and destructive distillation. Tars can be fractionated into [1] light oils, boiling below 200°C... [2] heavy tars, boiling above that... and [3] pitch. Light tars tend to be mixtures of aldehydes, carboxylic acids, esters, and ketones. Heavy oil contains... phenol derivatives; one of its uses... a wood preservative... wood tar creosote..."

"In fuel chemistry... we deal with several kinds of bond, and mixtures of... different compounds. At temperatures high enough to drive pyrolysis of... one kind of bond... other kinds... break... [I]mmediate products may undergo... subsequent reactions. As a result, pyrolysis... give[s] complex mixtures of products... of little utility if the intent is to produce a single product..."

"With... ... sealed within layers of inorganic ... long... geological processes can operate. Assuming typical s... [b]urial to 10 km would be equivalent to... 100-300°C. These... seem too low to drive... pyrolysis reactions... significant at... [≈]350°C. But... time is on our side... in geological time, tens of millions of years for catagenesis of humic kerogen."

"Like their aliphatic counterparts, the smaller phenols are also water-soluble. Phenol... has... solubility...[≈]82 g/kg water. ...Phenols are produced in coal and wood pyrolysis. Any water used in such processes becomes contaminated with phenols (as well as other compounds) and requires processing before being released... into the environment."

"The organic material in oil shales requires pyrolysis to force the catagenesis of ... This can be done above ground in kilns, or underground with the shale still in place."

"Gasification of coal... [goes] back to the 1790s at least. Before World War II, the United States... had... [≈20,000] small coal gassifiers... a popular fuel gas until... the interstate natural gas pipeline network... after World War II. Many... were simple pyrolysis or steam-carbon reactions in... crude equipment having serious environmental problems."

"Groundwater could become contaminated by organic compounds during coal pyrolysis, and by various inorganic compounds liberated as the coal is consumed. Some... pose problems for environmental quality or human health."

"To a large extent, biomass resembles gasification, with some distinctions... The kinds... considered... include wood, wood wastes (e.g. sawdust), and s. Some... grass, such as switchgrass... grown as energy crops might also serve... [R]elative to coal, biomass usually has lower calorific value... and sulfur... higher moisture, higher... and oxygen, and produces a higher yield of volatiles on pyrolysis. ...Generally biomass chars are more reactive than coal chars, so... may[be]... less and oxygen are needed for... [its] gasification."

"[L]iquids can be produced from coal by... pyrolysis... by dissolution... [i.e.] solvent extraction... or by reaction of coal with or with solvents... donating hydrogen (hydroliquification). All... constitute... coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology."

"Pyrolysis of biomass, heavy petroleum fractions, , , and usually produces some amount of liquid product. Pyrolysis... without an externally added... [source] is constrained... Pyrolysis produces liquids, but leaves a residue of carbonaceous char or coke. Usually... gases also form. The... proportions of solid, liquid, and gas depend on the... feedstock and... reaction conditions."

"[L]arge particles may not be heated uniformly... consequently pyrolysis yields are less. Heating rate is also important. During slow heat-up as... in simple... s most coals begin to decompose [≈]350-400°C. ...[L]iquid and gaseous products ...peak ...[≈]425-475°C. This phase of pyrolysis ends ...[≈]500-550°C. ...[V]ery rapid heating [e.g.] in entrained flow gasifiers ...quickly by-passes this stage, so... evolution of liquids is nil."

"pyrolysis is... complicated... by the fact... primary pyrolysis products... are... able to react among themselves... with ... from the moisture in the coal... with char or coke, or... several of these. The products... often called secondary... may differ... from the primary... Primary products can be studied... if... quench[ed]... rapidly or... [fed] directly into a suitable... instrument... [e.g.] a gas chromatograph."

"In industrial practice... design of the pyrolysis reactor affects... composition of liquid products, because... [it] determines how long... primary products are exposed to pyrolysis temperatures..."

"Commercial... applications of pyrolysis have been to produce... a eous fuel... or a char... Liquids... directly are unsuitable... as fuels... Some... downstream operations would be required... Nevertheless, low-temperature s can be refined... into or ."

"Possibly, future events on the world energy scene will revive interest... Pyrolysis offers... simplicity of process and equipment design relative to gasification and hydroliquification. ...[But] competing technologies usually provide high yields of a single type... gas, liquid or solid... which may offset the added complexity and cost..."

"[R]ules change when an external supply of is... available. Hydropyrolysis, i.e. pyrolizing coal in a hydrogen atmosphere, increases the yields of liquids and gases... [H]ydrogen... stabilizes radicals by hydrogen capping before... termination by recombination reactions that... lead to char... Despite this advantage... hydropyrolysis has never been commercialized."

"[S]tories... about "free oil" from coal pyrolysis, often in reference to a low-temperature ... by ... [≈]80 years ago. Many... accompanied by... conspiracy theories... The , and similar carbonization processes... produce a liquid. Presumably, a... clever accountant could figure out how this... could be "free," provided... markets existed for... large amounts of char and gas produced at the same time, and... could be sold... high enough to compensate for giving away the liquid. Then there's the cost of refining the low-temperature into specification-grade marketable fuel..."

"Often... terms carbonization and pyrolysis are used almost interchangeably. Pyrolysis has the broader meaning: breaking... molecules by... heat or thermal energy. ...[P]yrolysis ...could be run to make gases and liquids rather than solids as the primary product. ... narrowly defined, refers to conversion of a starting material into carbon, or a carbon-rich solid. ...[One can] pyrolyze a hydrocarbon feedstock for the purpose of carbonization, but carbonization is not... pyrolysis by another name. Carbonization can be effected without heat as... primary driving force... Carbonization driven by thermal energy usually requires >500°C."

"Pyrolysis of an oil product or natural gas leads to thermal blacks. ...Acetylene black is made by of acetylene. ...[P]reheated to 800°C ...acetylene is introduced and... because the pyrolysis is exothermic, the temperature... reaches ~2500°C. formation takes place... [800°C-~]2000°C. ...2000-2500°C induces partial of the carbon black. Due to... partial graphitic nature, acelylene blacks have... applications where good [electrical and thermal] conductivity... or... very low chemical reactivity is desirable."

"Almost all pyrolysis reactions are endothermic because they involve breaking bonds in stable compounds."

"Pyrolysis of fossil or s... is... accompanied by char formation. In some cases, this is the point... being an example. ...[I]f pyrolysis were ...done to make gaseous or liquid fuels, and no... market existed for the char, it would be possible to... bury the char... [which] would sequester carbon..."

"[P]yrolysis of biomass to produce char for carbon sequestration has multiple benefits... The product... is... called or Agri-char, sometimes (dark earth)... Trials in Australia have produced a doubling... or tripling of crop production... [C]har is likely to retain some... , , and ... Biochars are very porous... taking up and holding moisture. ...By ...stimulating plant growth, biochar has a double impact... First, it... sequesters carbon. Second... increased growth of plants removes CO, from the atmosphere..."

"Annual production of worldwide amounts to some four gigatonnes. A pyrolysis... that yielded only ten percent could produce enough to fertilize some forty million hectares..."

"s are... ancient technology. Biomass pyrolysis would be "low tech." Farmers could build and install their own... Alternatively, a biochar kiln could be mounted on... a truck... and taken from farm to farm..."

"A comprehensive program..: harvesting and shipping biomass to a centralized biomass or plant within the economically limiting radius, and beyond... converting biomass to biochar in small, decentralized units."