Edwin Land Quotes

Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.

Innovation accelerates and compounds.

The technological breakthrough of the World Wide Web has been enormously beneficial to society.

There's been resistance to every new technology that's ever been introduced. When books came out hundreds of years ago, there were complaints that it would destroy the oral tradition. Some of those fears were justified, but it didn't stop the rise of the written word. And books have proven to be incredibly useful.

I'm sure there will continue to be exciting new products and major changes, but it looks as if the existing technology has a great deal of room to grow and prosper.

I actually think the one who is underestimated in terms of impact he's had on society is Bill Gates. The reason is that with the innovation of software, he really allowed the computer revolution to take hold.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

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 think about the automobile, I think about like, when I was a kid, you know, the invention of the answering machine, which I was like, 'Wow.' Or call waiting, which was, like, very big. It was a very big thing. Call waiting was a very big thing. And these incremental innovations happen constantly.

Mass application of technological innovations, which constitutes much of the distinctive substance of modern economic growth, is closely connected with the further progress of science, in its turn the basis for additional advance in technology.

Especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.

Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.

You look at the steamboat, the railroad, the car, the airplane - not all of these were invented in the Anglo-American world, but they were popularized and extended by it. They were made possible by the financial architecture, the capital intensive operations invented and developed by the Anglo-Americans.

People see technology as something that will ruin society and culture, but I've always embraced technology.

With the emergence of civilization, the rate of change shifted from hundreds of thousands of years to millennia. With the emergence of science as a way of knowing the universe, the rate of change shifted to centuries.

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn't they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines... There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

You can graph human evolution, which is mostly a straight line, but we do get better and change over time, and you can graph technological evolution, which is a line that's going straight up. They are going to intersect each other at some point, and that's happening now.

We know that defence work results in more than great defence hardware - it can drive innovation and advances in all areas of our life.

Little changes are the enemies of great changes.

Mechanical refrigeration has been found in advance of the wants of the country.

It’s important to embrace new technologies instead of fight them.

Who is not rich to-day when compared with his ancestors of a century ago? The steamboat and the railroad bring to his breakfast table the coffees of Java and Brazil, the fruits from Florida and California, and the steaks from the plains. The loom arrays him in garments and the factories furnish him with a dwelling that the richest contemporaries of his grandfather would have envied. With health and industry he is a prince

Shall an invention be patented or donated to the public freely? I have known some well-meaning scientific men ... to look askance at the patenting of inventions, as if it were a rather selfish and ungracious act, essentially unworthy. The answer is very simple. Publish an invention freely, and it will almost surely die from lack of interest in its development. It will not be developed and the world will not be benefited. Patent it, and if valuable, it will be taken up and developed into a business.

We want traditional change—not transformational change.

… increased industrial efficiency makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with less labor