Quote of the day, mostly related to astronomy.

[messier 111]

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

[messier 111]

Technology gives us power, but it does not and cannot tell us how to use that power. Thanks to technology, we can instantly communicate across the world, but it still doesn't help us know what to say. Jonathan Sacks

[helicon]

Science should belong to scientists and not the publishers. Alexandra Elbakyan

Tell that to Elsevier!

Have you ever tried to publish a paper in a science or technical journal? The cheap ones are hundreds of dollars. It's thousands to publish in Nature.

* follow up: I just looked up Elbakyan.... that's exactly what she did, in fact.

That's why I like the PLos journals...
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/journal-information

[messier 111]

Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. Stephen Hawking

[messier 111]

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. B. F. Skinner

[messier 111]

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle. James Surowiecki

[GCoyote]

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle. James Surowiecki

.
I recall a Japanese report about cell phones. The best selling models had over 200 functions. The average person actually used 5-7. That was at least ten years ago so I'm sure it's much worse now.

[messier 111]

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world. Jimmy Carter

[messier 111]

Technology has to be invented or adopted. Jared Diamond

[messier 111]

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

[helicon]

Technology has to be invented or adopted. Jared Diamond

Anyone else enjoy Dr. Diamond's books on Geography?

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" was a pretty good book.

[messier 111]

It may not always be profitable at first for businesses to be online, but it is certainly going to be unprofitable not to be online. Esther Dyson

[messier 111]

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. Mitch Kapor

[messier 111]

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are. Clive James

[messier 111]

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

[messier 111]

Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards also escalate. Alvin Toffler

[messier 111]

The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[messier 111]

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. Carl Sagan

[messier 111]

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift. Wernher von Braun

[messier 111]

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