J. C. R. Licklider Quotes

I want to see what technology's going to be like in a few hundred years, if the human race hasn't completely obliterated itself by then.

I make short films, little documentaries, about the co-evolution of humans and technology.

If you think about some of the things that are being talked about by thoughtful, intelligent scientists, you realize that in 100 years the human race won't even be recognizable.

I'm surprised that VR has come about so quickly. It's lucky I just happened to write a book imagining virtual reality right on the cusp of it actually happening.

In some ways, technology keeps on enhancing us, and we embrace it.

Computers get better, faster than anything else ever. A child's PlayStation today is more powerful than a military supercomputer from 1996. But our brains are wired for a linear world. As a result, exponential trends take us by surprise. I used to teach my students that there are some things, you know, computers just aren't good at like driving a car through traffic.

It's only a matter of time before machinery becomes sentient. It's going to happen because we're already slaves to all of it.

Homo sapiens, you and me, we are basically the same as people 10,000 years ago. The next revolution will change that.

We work in an industry where people invent technology to avoid what we create.

We have not been asking the serious questions about the future of our species, questions sci-fi regularly explores by showing us the best and worst of what could be.

We can't stop the development of smarter and smarter artificial intelligences. So our alternative is to make ourselves smarter so that we always stay one step ahead.

We've been merging with tools since the beginning of human evolution, and arguably, that's one of the things that makes us human beings.

Some of our best and unexpected discoveries have been born out of crises - from the Second World War, for example, came Alan Turing's decoding machine, widely considered as the precursor to modern day computers and artificial intelligence.

Avoid the spectacle of technology and instead focus on technology and science solving real problems.

Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.

I do something to make things nature never made but which is useful to humans.

I grew up using maps and having a sense of direction, and now I have a phone. I used to try to remember numbers, and now I... can just call them up instantly. And that's great. But what's happening right now is that we're in a phase of human evolution where we're merging with machines.

We need a lot more technically literate people. The computers are the tools that are going to solve essentially all problems, and the people who can use them better will be more effective.

Perhaps all of us have come to rely too deeply on machinery and software to be our allies without wondering about the cost: the way technology doesn't fix problems without creating new ones.

The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.

The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rulers - It's the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments - Too bad we've forgotten how to do it

First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.

Someday it'll all be done by machine. Information machines.

Biological evolution is too slow for the human species. Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.