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*After all, all devices
have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication---
and lies. The discovery of fire introduced cooking---and arson. The
discovery of the compass improved navigation---and destroyed civilizations
in Mexico and Peru. The automobile is marvelously useful---and kills
Americans by the tens of thousands each year. Medical advances have
saved lives by the millions---and intensified the population explosion.
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-Isaac Asimov
Gold: The Final Science Fiction
Collection, 1995
Part Two: On Science Fiction, "The Robot Chronicles", 1990
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Technology . . .the knack of arranging the
world so that we don't have to experience it.
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-Max Frisch
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When you're on the phone you're nowhere.
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-Ollie MacNoonan
"Where You Are and Where Are You"
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*The most thrilling
moment was when the engine started moving, and the ride through the
underground tunnel out of Grand Central. Everything I thought of as
heroic about man's technological achievements was there concretely for
me to feel for the first time in my life.
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-Ayn Rand
Private correspondence to Isabel Paterson (author of The God of the
Machine, and a friend), February 7, 1948
Letters of Ayn Rand, 1995
Chapter 5, "Letters to Isabel Paterson"
Michael S. Berliner, ed.
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*The asteroid belt may
be a place where a planet was once prevented from forming because of the
gravitational tides of the giant nearby planet Jupiter; or it may be the
shattered remains of a planet that blew itself up. This seems improbable
because no scientist on Earth knows how a planet might blow itself up,
which is probably just as well.
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-Carl Sagan
Cosmos, 1980
Chapter IV, "Heaven and Hell"
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*As a philosopher in our
part of the world once said: 'The artifacts of a sufficiently advanced
extraterrestrial civilization would be indistinguishable from magic.'
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-Devi Sukhavati, an Indian character in Carl
Sagan's
Contact, 1985
Part II, "The Machine", Chapter 11, "The World Message Consortium"
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Civilization advances by extending the
number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of
them.
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-Alfred North Whitehead
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I put instant coffee in a microwave oven
and almost went back in time.
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-Steven Wright
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