Krista Tippett Quotes

If you look at the history of technology over a couple hundred years, it's all about time compression and making the globe smaller. It's had positive effects, all the ones that we know. So we're much less likely to have the kind of terrible misunderstandings that led to World War I, for example.

I wouldn't put a big trust in what people in Silicon Valley say. They may be good at manipulating ones and zeroes and writing software, but beyond that, their contribution to human progress has been pretty dismal. I'm not impressed.

I truly hope that we can evolve with technology, and use it for the benefit of all mankind, but history might suggest otherwise.

The issue of climate change, it really does bring home the fact that we are on one planet, and that some of the impact of what human beings do in one corner of the world is going to affect people in a distant corner of the world. So we may still feel very far from each other, but we are really very close to each other because of the changes we have made with travel and technology and especially the information technology.

Information technology has brought people much closer together than ever before, providing a democratizing and mostly stabilizing influence.

Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state.

Technology is a wonderful tool, but also if used incorrectly a horrible tool. We're fascinated by all aspects of it, whatever makes our human lives easier on the planet, but eventually there will have to be some sort of merger. The fascination isn't going to die down.

The only perfection which modern civilization achieves is mechanical; machines are magnificent and immaculate but the life which serves them or is served by them isn't magnificent or shiny or more perfect or more comely.

Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.

The telegraph would bind man to his fellow-man in such bonds of amity as to put an end to war.

This is our chance to one up the Greeks! It is really possible with the technology of today, not tomorrow. We can provide all the works of humankind to all the people in the world. It will be an achievement remembered for all time…

At the present time, when railways, the telegraph, the telephone, to say nothing of other inventions and improvements of importance, have simplified communication between all lands and nations to the last degree, there is scarcely any reason to fear either distance or the estrangement of the several parts of a single whole. Practically distance is almost nonexistent. What to our ancestors appeared simply near at hand now seems to lie immediately before our eyes

A world in which we can fully experience the benefits that a connected society brings remains out of reach. Vested interests all too often feel threatened by the modern world, and they are holding Scotland back. We want to change that.

We cannot idealize technology. Technology is only and always the reflection of our own imagination, and its uses must be conditioned by our own values.

With science, technology and globalization, man is changing the world faster than his evolution can keep up with the new dangers.

The coming of the wireless Era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous.

Technology itself is neither good nor bad. People are good or bad.

I believe the continually advancing Information Revolution will lend us the wisdom and strength to address humanity's previously unsolvable problems and help us make a positive impact on all of society.

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

With any advent in technology, any technological innovation, there is the good and the bad.

My obsession is with technology and how it can improve human life. In my view, what we have seen in the last 300 years is only a trailer.

Not only will innovative technology create a more connected human race; it will normalize access to our most basic needs.

As humans, we've always innovated our way out of problems, whether it was the first torch to light a dark cave or the steam engine that sparked a revolution.

I think it's the responsibility of people in tech to find solutions.