Freeman Dyson Quotes About Technology

Quotes about: Technology

• 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.

  Freeman Dyson

  Life, Mother, Art

• The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.

  Freeman Dyson

  Technology, Simple, Medieval Europe

  "Infinite in All Directions, Ch. 8 : Quick Is Beautiful, p. 135". Book by Freeman Dyson, 1988.

• Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is impotent.

  Freeman Dyson

  Technology, Morality

• 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.

  Freeman Dyson

  Horse, New York, Science

  "Infinite in All Directions" by Freeman Dyson, Ch. 8, (p. 135), 1988.

• 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.

  Freeman Dyson

  Country, Science, Technology

  "Infinite in All Directions: Gifford lectures given at Aberdeen" by Freeman Dyson, (p. 270), 2004.

• It's not going to be just humans colonizing space, it's going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe.

  Freeman Dyson

  Moving, Technology, Space

• 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.

  Freeman Dyson

  Horse, Dark, Winter

  "Infinite in All Directions" by Freeman Dyson, Ch. 8, (p. 135), 1988.

• 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.

  Freeman Dyson

  Technology, Gambling, Damnation

  1979 Disturbing the Universe, ch.1.

• Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.

  Freeman Dyson

  Brother, Successful, Technology

  Freeman Dyson (1999). “Imagined World”, p.17, Universities Press

• What the world needs is a small, compact, flexible fusion technology that could make electricity where and when it is needed. The existing fusion program is leading to a huge source of centralized power, at a price that nobody except a government can afford.

  Freeman Dyson

  Technology, Government, Fusion

• The marketplace judges technologies by their practical effectiveness, by whether they succeed or fail to do the job they are designed to do.

  Freeman Dyson

  Jobs, Technology, Effectiveness

  Freeman Dyson (1999). “Imagined World”, p.182, Universities Press

• Lucky individuals in each generation find technology appropriate to their needs.

  Freeman Dyson

  Technology, Lucky, Needs

  Freeman Dyson (1999). “Imagined World”, p.182, Universities Press

• The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people.

  Freeman Dyson

  Technology, People, Problem

  Freeman Dyson (1999). “Imagined World”, p.182, Universities Press

• In the long run, the only solution I see to the problem of diversity is the expansion of mankind into the universe by means of green technology... Green technology means we do not live in cans but adapt our plants and our animals and ourselves to live wild in the universe as we find it... When life invades a new habitat, she never moves with a single species. She comes with a variety of species, and as soon as she is established, her species spread and diversify further. Our spread through the galaxy will follow her ancient pattern.

  Freeman Dyson

  Running, Moving, Mean

• Many of the technologies that are now racing ahead most rapidly, replacing human workers in factories and offices with machines, making stockholders richer and workers poorer, are indeed tending to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth.

  Freeman Dyson

  Technology, Office, Racing

• The great question for our time is, how to make sure that the continuing scientific revolution brings benefits to everybody rather than widening the gap between rich and poor. To lift up poor countries, and poor people in rich countries, from poverty, to give them a chance of a decent life, technology is not enough. Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.

  Freeman Dyson

  Country, Technology, Rich Countries

  "Progress In Religion". Freeman Dyson's Acceptance Speech for the Templeton Prize at the Washington National Cathedral, www.edge.org. May 16, 2000.

• Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.

  Freeman Dyson

  Technology, Toys, Ethics

  Freeman J. Dyson (2016). “Dear Professor Dyson: Twenty Years of Correspondence Between Freeman Dyson and Undergraduate Students on Science, Technology, Society and Life”, p.347, World Scientific

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