Technological Breakthroughs Quotes

The greatest existential risks over the coming decades or century arise from certain, anticipated technological breakthroughs that we might make in particular, machine super intelligence, nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Each of these has an enormous potential for improving the human condition by helping cure disease, poverty, etc. But one could imagine them being misused, used to create powerful weapon systems, or even some kind of accidental destructive scenario, where we suddenly are in possession of some technology that's far more powerful than we are able to control or use wisely.

Great wealth could make an enormous difference over the next decade if they sensibly support the scientific elite. Just the elite. Because the elite makes most of the progress. You should worry about people who produce really novel inventions, not pedantic hacks.

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

Every technological advance we've made in the 21st century and throughout the 20th has come from the United States of America.

All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.

People don't want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology - all these areas where the progress has been a lot more limited than people think. And the question is why.

Technology can do amazing things for us. It's something we need to keep an eye on.

What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.

I don't see anything beneficial about the US spending 100 billion dollars to go back to the moon unless we learn something new that will help us go to the moons of Saturn okay and so we ought to use that to breed new breakthroughs and to test new breakthroughs and to fund it.

The benefits of biomedical progress are obvious, clear, and powerful. The hazards are much less well appreciated.

Sciences evolve.

The vanishing point leads to the missiles of today, which can take us out of this world. It could be that the west's greatest mistakes were the 'invention' of the external vanishing point and the internal combustion engine.

The distinguishing characteristic of the techno-thriller is technical detail.

This is not yet a scientific age.

We know that defence work results in more than great defence hardware - it can drive innovation and advances in all areas of our life.

Linden Lab's technological breakthroughs have made 'Second Life' a truly revolutionary experience.

People don't realize how many aspects of our lives are touched in one way or another by not just the discoveries, the technological breakthroughs, but the process of science.

The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.

I began to realize something - to understand the future you have to understand physics. Physics of the last century gave us television, radio, microwaves, gave us the Internet, lasers, transistors, computers - all of that from physics.

So now, if we don't fund the physical sciences, where will the Next Big Thing come from?

A ten-times increase in the weight-oriented density of batteries would enable so many other moonshots, if we can find a great idea. We just haven't found one yet.

We live in an age that is driven by information. Technological breakthroughs... are changing the face of war and how we prepare for war.

One of the interesting and exciting things about my job is watching technological ground being pioneered.

Technology is an important element in progress. See, we can always do something better. We can improve water technology, or energy efficiency. There is always progress forward using technology and that's where innovation starts.