Quote of the day, mostly related to astronomy.

[messier 111]

I force people to have coffee with me, just because I don't trust that a friendship can be maintained without any other senses besides a computer or cellphone screen. John Cusack

[messier 111]

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite. Thomas Sowell

[messier 111]

Style used to be an interaction between the human soul and tools that were limiting. In the digital era, it will have to come from the soul alone. Jaron Lanier

[helicon]

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite. Thomas Sowell

Very true. There has been a decline in rational thinking and the ability to assess the true from the false, with the font of knowledge and digital shortcuts on writing and grammar available a keystroke away, we fall way behind the capacity for reasoned thought for example - by people in the18th and 19th centuries. Call it what you will, groupthink, dumbing down to the lowest common denominator, etc.

[messier 111]

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society. Arthur C. Clarke

[messier 111]

We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed. Lawrence Clark Powell

[messier 111]

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. Edward R. Murrow

[GCoyote]

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.

.
It was and gives you a lot to think about. I have a couple others in the stack, waiting for me.

[messier 111]

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. Edward R. Murrow

[messier 111]

We are living in dystopia, in a world that is dominated by technology and disconnect, alienation, loneliness, and dysfunction. Steven Wilson

[messier 111]

New technology is not good or evil in and of itself. It's all about how people choose to use it. David Wong

[messier 111]

Our world is built on biology and once we begin to understand it, it then becomes a technology. Ryan Bethencourt

[messier 111]

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. Marshall McLuhan

[messier 111]

Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we're still at the mercy of nature. Neil deGrasse Tyson

[helicon]

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan seemed pretty prescient about social media years in advance

[messier 111]

Biology is the most powerful technology ever created. DNA is software, protein are hardware, cells are factories. Arvind Gupta

[messier 111]

I'm fascinated by the idea that genetics is digital. A gene is a long sequence of coded letters, like computer information. Modern biology is becoming very much a branch of information technology. Richard Dawkins

[messier 111]

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on. Mark Zuckerberg

[messier 111]

“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas Day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.” – Andy Rooney

[messier 111]

“The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.” – Burton Hills