Michael Leunig Quotes

Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn't like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts.

Technology is a wonderful thing, but I think it's violently misused.

Asians love technology. They see it as the path to a good life. This is not so in Europe where there is much skepticism about technology—maybe because of Nazi Germany and its use of technology.

Once we have something that is no longer under control, once technological development is yanked out of our hands, it doesn't have to continue to be beneficial to humans.

Every young person gets so excited about new software packages and new technology.

I think we are always right to worry about damaging consequences of new technologies even as we are empowered by them. History suggests we should not panic nor be too sanguine about cool new gizmos. There's a delicate balance.

It would be incredibly presumptuous and self-serving of me to believe that Facebook was the end of history. The only way it could possibly be the end of history is if it becomes some sort of artificial super intelligence that takes over the world.

You can't stop technology or science, and it is snowballing quicker than ever. Something's got to come to a head. How? Who knows? But it will.

Like gods, we have created a new universe called cyberspace that contains great good and ominous evil. We do not know yet if this new dimension will produce more monsters than marvels, but it is too late to go back.

The virtual world is not the enemy. The pioneers invented a world they believed in, but the followers must follow that world whether they believe in it or not.

When dealing in the technology, it becomes a question of whether you overuse something. I think that's worse than having something technologically available to you and not using it.

Technology is not destiny.

I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made.

In the '50s, a lot of stories were built around radiation and the proliferation of new technology. In the '70s, there were a lot of stories that dealt with the Vietnam War. So comic books have always been a reflection of the times we live in.

It's not just the effect of technology on the environment, on religion, on the economic structure, on society, on politics, etc. It's that everything now exists in technology to the point where technology is the new and comprehensive host of nature of life.

When people say that the Internet is going to make us all geniuses, that was said about the telegraph. On the other hand, when they say the Internet is going to make us stupid, that also was said about the telegraph.

Every time a new technology comes along, we feel we're about to break through to a place where we will not be able to recover. The advent of broadcast radio confused people. It delighted people, of course, but it also changed the world.

I am totally anti-technology.

Mystery is gone to the certainty of technological principles. So the real terror, the real aggression against life comes in the form of the pursuit of our technological happiness.

Unless technology itself is drastically repressed, the idea of the dystopian monoculture like Orwell's 1984 gets harder to believe. But the danger of a solipsistic society will grow, of a disconnected society of mirror-watchers and navel-gazers.

These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish.

Luddism is no longer with us, but today we seem to be overtaken by its opposite, the inevitability of technological change coupled with the blind belief in capitalism's ability to provide us with all we need.

One calls humans, who see only the good side of a new invention, technicians.

We wring our hands over the miscarriages of technology and take its benefactions for granted

Force undertaken as police action that turns into a real war is a distasteful shock to the politicians who expect that force can be used without injustice.