Engineers From The United States

"Is it wrong to pray for God to make me more successful so that I can be more humble?"

"If "knowledge puffs up," then we professors are in ever-present danger of having egos resembling threatened blow fish."

"Engineers actually design things. This is why [many] engineers are interested in the area of intelligent design."

"Computers are no more able to create information than iPods are capable of creating music."

"AI [artificial intelligence] is like a toddler with a Ph.D.. It’s really smart, but it still needs to be supervised."

"We are more than computers made out of meat. We have a soul, we have a spirit and we have a mind."

"[On Chaitin's Constant:] Chaiton's work in identifying it is an intellectually stunning piece of mathematics with the clear philosophical and theological implication that our universe is not fully explainable in materialist terms."

"All engineering fields are either solutions looking for problems or problems looking for solutions."

"Forecasting the future of technology is risky. Predictions tend to be linear whereas technical advances come in quantum jumps from paradigm shifts. After the second World War, forecasters in electronics [who did not foresee the transistor] would have linearly [and incorrectly] foretasted breakthroughs in better vacuum tube reliability from, for example, improved filament chemistry."

"[N]on-algorithmic computing in digital silicon is an oxymoron."

"The ultimate success of AI is not due to journal papers, blogs, press releases, forecasts, corporate acquisitions, speculation, or promises. Success is measured by reduction to practice."

"Life is so short. Why waste a single day of it doing something that doesn't matter, that doesn't try to do something big?"

"You can make it out of Unobtainium!"

"It's the last steps that are perhaps more memorable to me than that first step, because I'd been in this valley on the Moon, almost living in a paradox. Sunshine the whole three days we were there. Yet surrounded by the blackest black that we can conceive in our mind, and we don't know how to define it, describe it. We pull words out like infinity, the endlessness of space, the endlessness of time, but we don't know what that is. But I can tell you the endlessness of it all exists, because I saw it with my own eyes. So you're in the middle of this. You're part of this unique part of the universe. Everything's three dimension when you look back at the Earth in all its splendor, in all its glory, multicolors of the blues of the oceans and whites of the snow and the clouds. If your arm were long enough while you're on the surface, it's almost as if you could reach out and put it in the palm of your hand and bring it back close to you and take it home with you. Take it home with you so everybody else could see."

"[(...) here is Cernan on the subject of window gazing:] You have to literally just pinch yourself and ask yourself the question, silently: Do you know where you are at this point in time and space, and in reality and in existence, when you can look out the window and you're looking at the most beautiful star in the heavens -- the most beautiful because it's the one we understand and we know, it's home, it's people, family, love, life -- and besides that it is beautiful. You can see from pole to pole and across oceans and continents and you can watch it turn and there's no strings holding it up, and it's moving in a blackness that is almost beyond conception."

"I felt that I was literally standing on a plateau somewhere out there in space. A plateau that science and technology had allowed me to get to. But now what I was seeing and even more important what I was feeling at that moment in time, science and technology had no answers. Literally no answers because there I was, and there you are, there you were, the earth dynamic, overwhelming.. And I felt that the world just.. There is too much purpose, too much logic, it was just too beautiful to happen by accident. There has to be somebody bigger than you and bigger than me.. And I mean this in a spiritual sense, not in a religious sense, there has to be a creator of the universe who stands above the religions that we, ourselves create to govern our lives."

"As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

"The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer."

"Business is a good game—lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money."

"With engineering, I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly."

"The technology at the leading edge changes so rapidly that you have to keep current after you get out of school. I think probably the most important thing is having good fundamentals."

"The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year... Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer."

"I had no idea this was going to be an accurate prediction, but amazingly enough instead of 10 [years] doubling, we got nine over the 10 years, but still followed pretty well along the curve."

"If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the semiconductor industry, a Rolls Royce would get half a million miles per gallon, and it would be cheaper to throw it away than to park it."

"Some things may have been tried before their time, but if these things don't violate the laws of physics they are likely to prove possible the next time around. Engineering is a series of failures with an occasional success. At least the kind where you are really looking at new technology. You tend to try things. You try things that are extrapolations of what has happened before. A lot of them don't work. Occasionally, you hit one that does. That's the way we make progress. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly. But, I've known technical people who are very competent but who would avoid doing a critical experiment. They would kind of work around the problem and do the things where the results were relatively straightforward, but they hated to do that experiment that might tell if their whole approach was right or wrong. And these people were relatively nonproductive. Then I've known other people who weren't perhaps as bright as the ones that worked around the problem who jumped right at the heart of the matter. They turn out to be the most productive. So my single piece of advice is don't delay making the critical test. That's the one that will tell you if you are right or wrong and where to go next."

"Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius."

"We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also."

"Absolute authority will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire. Those who fail will die."

"To err is human, whether we are religious, atheist, or agnostic."

"Everyone is using science and technology to enhance or to alter our body chemistry in order to stay healthy and be more in control of our lives. We are all transhumanists to varying degrees."

"Too many people prefer to stay inside their own comfort zones with a one-sided liberal or conservative sentiment, creating their own information silos."

"When people refuse to see how things look from another point of view, their silo mentality has fueled arguments in families, disputes with neighbors, bigotry between races, and conflicts among nations."

"Modern humanity with some 5,000 years of recorded history has been experiencing growing pains, with no end in sight. It is high time for humanity to grow up and to transcend itself by embracing transhumanism."

"Had the early cavemen fought with atomic bombs instead of rocks and cattle bone clubs, the human species would have been extinct eons ago. With great power comes great responsibility."

"Let’s not give up on faith and the human spirit in accomplishing the impossible – world peace, universal rights, and human longevity to name a few."

"The advancement of education and the advancement of society are absolutely synonymous. The causes of conflict can be eliminated only through the advancement of both."

"Technological singularity is inevitable given the human nature to discover, create, and change the world that we live in."

"Total information awareness has helped to stabilize relations among international powers, and to that end espionage is making the world a safer place."

"Albert Einstein quipped that “everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open.” Although we may not have the complete knowledge or we may be bombarded with contradictory information, we can still make informed decisions based on wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil."

"As artificial intelligence continues to evolve into superintelligence, King Solomon's challenge will supersede the Turing test."

"Transhumanists around the world are cooperating to mitigate existential threats to humankind."

"Transhumanists are building the Tower of Babel not to challenge God but to better understand the universe and human beings created in God’s image."

"The pen is mightier than the sword. Through uncensored journalistic investigations and opinion pieces presenting both sides of the coin, the press can eliminate the need for terrorists to commit violent crimes in order to get their messages across."

"Verily, trust Google. The truth is out there; we just need to know how to Google it!"

"As M said in the 2015 James Bond movie Spectre, “All the surveillance in the world can’t tell you what to do next. A license to kill is also a license not to kill.” America can exert its influence globally without resorting to war."

"Marc Goodman, global security advisor and futurist, spoke at the TEDGlobal 2012 in Edinburgh about his ominous warning: “If you control the code, you control the world. This is the future that awaits us.” First source code, then genetic code. Transhumanists are well aware of that danger and are highly respectful of individual freedom and privacy in the new era of total information awareness."

"Knowledge in and of itself is devoid of good and evil. Knowledge, however, does not necessarily make human beings wiser. In fact, knowledge without wisdom can be outright dangerous."

"In time, robots will be more versatile and ubiquitous."

"Given that the first manned Moon landing only had a 50 % chance of landing safely on the moon’s surface, it was an exemplary faith in technology and human spirit."

"Even a large majority of beautiful music, great literature, and wonderful work of arts depicts human suffering, injustice, fears, and unfulfilled desires."