Technological Limitations Quotes

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

There will never be a time when the old horse is not superior to any auto ever made.

We are still at the stumbling stage in atomic weapons.

There used to be technological limitations … that provided a measure of privacy for Americans. Now with essentially no technological limitations—the technology can practically do anything—the only way to strike the appropriate balance between liberty and security is to embed that balance in the law.

Although technology is proceeding at a dizzying pace, I believe that the human mind will always have control of itself. And since the human mind has a degree of infinity and imagination unlikely to be matched by a machine for a very, very long time, I don't think that we will become the machines of the machines.

Technology alone is not enough.

Can you imagine being Leonardo Da Vinci in the 1400s trying to describe his ideas for machines that would allow humans to fly to the average person of his time? This is hundreds of years before the invention of electricity, the internal combustion engine, and many other things we take for granted today.

We cannot have as our goal a world that cannot conceivably come to pass unless all scientific knowledge of the atom is erased.

Science fiction was rocket-mad for about 40 years until aerospace hit a brick wall about 1970. I would not write off space colonisation or exploration completely, but we are profoundly ill adapted for going boldly into outer space.

While many technological measures can be taken to secure safety at nuclear power plants, such measures on their own cannot cover great risks.

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?

If wars were won by superior technology alone, the United States would not have been vanquished in Vietnam or waylaid in Afghanistan.

Machines cannot make machines, unless back of them all are the brains and toil of men.

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.

One should proceed with caution. We may simply not be wise enough to do some of the kinds of engineering things that people are talking about doing.

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.

When a monk takes a vow of silence, is he still allowed to post messages on the Internet? Chances are God won't find out. Being ancient, God probably can't work computers. He holds the mouse gingerly, like it's made of fine china.

We were badly held back not just by the technology, but by the culture of journalism.

The problem here is that a civilization that is 1,000 light years away doesn't know we exist. They don't know that we have radio telescopes here on Earth because they see Earth as it was 1,000 years ago. Nothing can travel faster than light, so however good their instruments they can't see in affect the future. So there is no particular reason they should be sending us messages at this time.

Everybody right now, they look at the current technology, and they think, 'OK, that's what artificial neural nets are.' And they don't realize how arbitrary it is. We just made it up! And there's no reason why we shouldn't make up something else.

All of our current environmental problems are unanticipated harmful consequences of our existing technology. There is no basis for believing that technology will miraculously stop causing new and unanticipated problems while it is solving the problems that it previously produced.

Despite claims by some to the contrary, we have heard numerous times in hearings and briefings by experts that existing technologies do not fully or effectively detect nuclear material.

I'm concerned by a deficient technology. In other words, errors or noises. It absorbs me, and I wonder if new cultural currents could emerge from this deficiency.

Humans are very aggressive and scrappy, and go to war at the drop of a hat. However, a standard land war is no longer going to work as it is no longer technically possible.