Sherry Turkle Quotes

I mean, technology is amoral. It has no morality.

Technology is not good, it's neutral.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

Technology happens, it's not good, it's not bad. Is steel good or bad?

Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it.

Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is impotent.

What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

I believe in a higher power and I believe in good and bad, right and wrong. You sleep in the bed you make.

Productivity is grounded in the PC. Where does the computing power come from? How would you run 'USA Today' without PCs? Run a hospital without PCs? People don't want products, they want solutions.

Any powerful technology can be abused.

Of course you can use the products of science to do bad things, but you can use them to do good things, too.

Whatever science fiction movies we watch now, we can make the technology real in two days. What we can do is not important. What we should do is more important.

You can't blame science for being used for evil purposes. What you can do is say, 'This is an exceedingly powerful tool.' And you want to make sure it is used for good purposes, not bad ones. That is a political decision.

Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.

A scientist has to be neutral in his search for the truth, but he cannot be neutral as to the use of that truth when found. If you know more than other people, you have more responsibility, rather than less.

That is one of the Law's purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it.

Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.

Madame Lefoux shrugged. "I do not know about that, my lady. I mean to say, one's life is one thing; one's technology is an entirely different matter.

But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.

What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

The difference between God and the devil is in nothing except in unselfishness and selfishness. The devil knows as much as God, is as powerful as God; only he has no holiness that makes him a devil. Apply the same idea to the modern world: excess of knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils.

You are responsible for what you have done and the people whom you have influenced.

Honesty is largely a matter of information, of knowing that dishonesty is a mistake. Principle is not as powerful in keeping people straight as a policeman.

You have to be very careful about what you say. More importantly, you have to be very careful about what you do. You never know how or when you influence people – especially children.