18 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes on Technology

Arthur C. Clarke quotes on technology

2. If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

4. We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return ... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation ... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.

18. Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!

20. Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

21. The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life - much less intelligence - beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime.

24. The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers - and thermonuclear weapons.

41. 2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined.

44. Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

54. We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish.

59. Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other. This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technology tools help us to gather and disseminate information, but we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations. I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I hope we've learnt something from the most barbaric century in history - the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation:

65. We should always be prepared for future technologies, because otherwise they will come along and clobber us.

66. Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

71. Clarke's Third Law doesn't work in reverse. Given that 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,' it does not follow that 'any magical claim that anybody may make at any time is indistinguishable from a technological advance that well come some time in the future.' ... There have admittedly been occasions when authoritative, pontificating skeptics have come away with egg on their faces, even within their own lifetimes. But there have been a far greater number of occasions when magical claims have never been vindicated. An apparent magical claim might eventually turn out to be true. In any age there are so many magical claims that are, or could be, made. They can't all be true; many are mutually contradictory; and we have no reason to suppose that, simply by the act of sitting down and dreaming up a magical claim, we shall make it come true in some future technology. Some things that would surprise us today will come true in the future. But lots and lots of things that would surprise us today will not come true ever.

72. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from doubletalk.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

73. Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

74. Any sufficiently retarded magic is indistinguishable from technology.

76. Any sufficiently advanced chaos is indistinguishable from Usenet.

77. Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.