After realizing that we would eventually be able to build molecular machines that could arrange atoms to form virtually any pattern that we wanted, I saw that an awful lot of consequences followed from that.
In the past, scientists could disclaim direct responsibility for the use to which mankind had put their disinterested discoveries. We cannot take the same attitude now because the success which we have achieved in the development of nuclear power is fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all the inventions of the past.
We have our hands on an appalling bit of technology where the world is concerned. With rapidity and a Meter it can be shown that Heaven is a false dream and that the old religion was based on very painful lie, cynical betrayal.
I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.
Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.
The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem; not radio, but the soap opera; not the income tax, but the expense account; not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate
Positively, the effect of speeding up temporal sequence is to abolish time, much as the telegraph and cable abolished space. Of course, the photograph does both.
Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.
A world technology means either a world government or world suicide.
For every scientific (or engineering) action, there is an equal and opposite social reaction.
When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.
It's a truism in technological development that no silver lining comes without its cloud.
We need a metaphor that can contain the daemon of the future that we have conjured into being.
