Quincy Jones Quotes

When a machine can do something better and faster than a person can, I am happy to let the machine do it.

Let the machine take care of the machines, and I'll go spend more time with my family, or golf.

The story of automation is the story of a one-way shift from human control to automatic control.

… industry is at present producing as much as it did in 1929. [before the Great Depression] Ordinarily this would mean work for everybody, but since the depression, ten million dollars have been spent in modernizing these particular plants with the result that they are now using ten thousand fewer men than in 1929. Two million dollars more is to be spent shortly on further modernization, and much of the heavy work done in the past by men and skilled men, many of them, will be done by machinery. College and high school boys, who stand on a balcony somewhere and press buttons are preferred for this work today, and four men will do the work of one hundred men before long!

How do we judge whether technology is making us more productive, or just lazy and impatient?

Advances in automation, artificial intelligence and robotics, while increasing productivity, will also cause major upheavals to the workforce.

There's a fine line between something saving you time and replacing a bit of you that could be useful. I've certainly become more and more aware of that.

Technology has made it a lot easier to be productive. It's incredibly helpful to be able to get little bits of information quickly.

At its best, technology can empower people in extraordinary ways.

Improved productivity means less human sweat, not more.

If you have things or are involved with things that turn on, it's going to have code. And there are so many people - let's pick on the historians - even as a historian, let's say I ended up going the road of being a historian, just knowing some basic scripts, any kind of automation would have made me a 10 times better historian because I wouldn't have to sit there changing every file name to "1234" and then "12345." It can have a transformative value.

I wanted to automate any part of my life that I could. And the over-the-top solutions are more fun than the useful ones.

I believe technology serves us best when it gives us more time to do things that are uniquely human. This includes activities that are enjoyable, creative, and productive.

As much as technology has made me so much more efficient, enabling me to run a small but global company from where I happen to be, at times it feels like the technology is running me, as opposed to the other way round.

The fundamental problem here is that humans and automation approach the driving task differently.

I like modern efficiencies and functionality.

If technology can remove some of the labour-intensive tasks where the computer can do better than the human eye; that helps.

Automation is good, so long as you know exactly where to put the machine.

Pretty much all of my inventions come about the same way. I have an everyday problem or something that I'm too lazy to do, so I make a machine that does it for me.

If we could find a way to totally empower half of the brains in America, imagine how much more productive we could be.

That's what technology does to you - makes you lazy but allows you to innovate.

I'm still an engineer at heart. So if I can automate conversations that I find myself keep having to have, it seems like a good opportunity for me.

We have more tools at hand, literally, to make life easier and more productive than ever. We have Google, Wikipedia, iPads, iPhones, iTunes, YouTube, Netflix, and 600 cable channels. We can shop, pay bills, order food, and get nearly everything delivered, all of it with the touch of a finger on a device in the palm of our hand.

Computing is no more about work - it's all about making work happen with computers.

By helping us to be more productive, technology lets us to spend less time focusing on survival, and more on solving other challenges.