Ralph Merkle Quotes

Of course, technology is not an exogenous force over which humans have no control. We are not constrained by a binary choice between acceptance and rejection. Rather, the decisions we make every day as citizens, consumers, and investors guide technological progress.

A good piece of technology dreams of the day when it will be replaced by a newer piece of technology. This is one definition of progress.

The modern technologist is less 'sorcerer' and more 'sorcerer's apprentice'.

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.

Technology changes all the time; human nature, hardly ever.

People use technology only to mean digital technology. Technology is actually everything we make.

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it's like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

Every technological advance we've made in the 21st century and throughout the 20th has come from the United States of America.

I'm very pro-science and pro-technology; I believe that these have been key drivers of progress in the world in the last centuries.

Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.

Once upon a time, sound was new technology.

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.

I love the 3D revolution. I love the technology today that continues to push the envelope, continues break the new ground, and continues to raise the bar.

Consumer technology and medical tools have been created to benefit our daily lives. Without self-regulation, though, the industry could be at risk of potentially halting years of innovation and stunting growth in this field.

There is a constant need for new systems and new software.

An international race in the relevant technologies is getting under way at this point, not necessarily with an understanding of where that race leads in the long run, but strongly motivated by the short-term payoffs.

As we continue advancing and leveraging GIS and as we keep bringing in new generations of technology as well as new generations of people, my sense is we're going to achieve extraordinary things.

I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years - part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion.

It is only by the rational use of technology; to control and guide what technology is doing; that we can keep any hopes of a social life more desirable than our own: or in fact of a social life which is not appalling to imagine.

'The Victorian Internet' is a must read for anyone interested in the history of technology and in the cycles of hype, boom, and bust that seem to only quicken with each new wave of innovation. Highly recommended.

Congress commissioned the first telegraph line, the railroads, the Internet. The role of the government in developing new technology is often misunderstood.

We cannot idealize technology. Technology is only and always the reflection of our own imagination, and its uses must be conditioned by our own values.

We are much better at creating complex technologies than we are at controlling them.

A society without civil, political, and property rights may indeed find it difficult to innovate innovation outside the military sector, but it often has a relatively easy time adopting technologies that have already been developed elsewhere.

We presumably believe that most of the technological progress over the arc of humanity to date has been good. I don't see any argument to go back to 1600.