Quote

When thinking about the future, it is fashionable to be pessimistic. Yet the evidence unequivocally belies such pessimism. Over the past centuries, humanity's lot has improved dramatically - in the developed world, where it is rather obvious, but also in the developing world, where life expectancy has more than doubled in the past 100 years.

During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.

Technology is rooted in the past. It dominates the present and tends into the future. It is a real historical movement - one of the great movements which shape and represent their epoch.

People see technology as something that will ruin society and culture, but I've always embraced technology.

My dad was an inventor, and I think I've always had a rosy view of technology, or at least its potential.

I think that technology is the best thing that ever happened to mankind. It's an absurd notion that somehow, 'My God, what are we going to do when driverless cars come along?' It's going to save lives on the road. And maybe, one day, we'll all be working four days a week and not five or six days a week.

It's true that humanity has seen a succession of crises, wars and atrocities, but this negative side is offset by advances in technology and cultural exchanges.

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.

I know we should aspire to be higher philosophical beings, contemplating the universe and becoming more refined humans, but if all we did was think, then arguably we'd never have invented the wheel.