Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Human nature ensures that all new technologies will eventually be used, regardless of whether the outcome is good or bad.
In plain terms
People will find a way to use any new technology, for good or bad.
What can you take from it?
Accept that technology will be used, for better or worse.

Where it applies

  • policy making
  • tech adoption
  • ethical debates

Putting it to work

  • plan for misuse
  • regulate wisely
  • educate users

Questions to consider

  • Is technology always neutral?
  • Who controls how tools are used?

Another view

Some technologies might never gain widespread adoption.

More from Lewis Thomas

  1. Ants are more like the parts of an animal than entities on their own. They are mobile cells, circulating through a dense connective tissue of other ants in a m…

    Permalink to quote #5
  2. I can think of a few microorganisms, possibly the tubercle bacillus, the syphilis spirochete, the malarial parasite, and a few others, that have a selective ad…

    Permalink to quote #7
  3. We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. …

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster…

    Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford quote #42
  2. Technology does not always equal progress.

    Douglas CouplandDouglas Coupland quote #32
  3. I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.

    Henrik IbsenHenrik Ibsen quote #38