Nathan Myhrvold Quotes

Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household.

The men who made the Industrial Revolution are usually pictured as hardfaced businessmen with no other motive than self-interest. That is certainly wrong. For one thing, many of them were inventors who had come into business that way.

Technology and capitalism are very much linked. I think that capitalism probably works best in a technologically progressing society.

At its very best, the Western model speaks for itself. It's the model that put food on the table. It's the refrigerators. It put a man on the moon.

Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio - all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one another.

Man keeps inventing things all the time.

Electricity is an example of a general purpose technology, like the steam engine before it. General purpose technologies drive most economic growth, because they unleash cascades of complementary innovations, like lightbulbs and, yes, factory redesign.

The social and economic impact of innovative American researchers, companies, and workers over the course of U.S. history have been enormous.

I'm a great believer in the competitive system, and think that competition will bring us greater innovation and put American industry in information ahead of everyone also.

Without competition, the spectacular development of technology that we have seen in the last one hundred years in this country would not have happened.

To me, part of the magic of this era is that the very same innovations, discoveries, and technologies that are allowing us to live longer, healthier lives are also creating a healthier economy.

Prosperity in human society is misunderstood. The difference between a rich and poor society is the number of problems that society solves for its citizens. That means technological innovation is the source of all prosperity, but with every tech innovation, you also get disruption - ultimately, social and civic disruption.

Patents should be for technological innovations. So a program for a new machine tool should be patentable but a non-technological innovation, such as grammar-checking software for a word-processor, should not be.

Science is the engine that drives the economy and drives national defense.

NASA feeds the fuel of the technological furnace of America.

Marx never saw an electric light bulb.

The history of economic growth is the history of people making more with less and shifting into new jobs that were unheard of in the previous generation.

At the present time, when railways, the telegraph, the telephone, to say nothing of other inventions and improvements of importance, have simplified communication between all lands and nations to the last degree, there is scarcely any reason to fear either distance or the estrangement of the several parts of a single whole. Practically distance is almost nonexistent. What to our ancestors appeared simply near at hand now seems to lie immediately before our eyes

So give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe; that there is a mighty spirit working among us, who cannot be your anarchic and destroying Devil, and therefore may be the Ordering and Creating God.

Technology is often not a prime mover but a second-order consequence of food surpluses, urbanization, secularism, political stability ... and other conditions that create a fertile climate for innovation.

Every great invention takes a livelihood away from 50,000 men--& within ten years creates a livelihood for half a million.

The thing which has made Labor great & powerful is labor-saving machinery--& nothing else in the world could have done it. It has been labor's savior, benefactor; but Labor doesn't know it, & would ignorantly crucify it. But that is human & natural.

We plow new fields, we open new mines, we found new cities, we girdle the land with iron roads and lace the air with telegraph wires. We add knowledge to knowledge and utilize invention after invention. Yet it becomes no easier for the masses of our people to make a living. On the contrary, it is becoming harder.

Capitalism should not be thought of as an ideology, but instead should be thought of as an operating system. Think of your iPhone. Your iPhone merges hardware with software. Apps and hardware. Now think about all the hardware as the physical reality all around you, and think of the apps as entrepreneurial activity, creative energy. And in-between, you have an operating system. As you have advances in hardware, you have advances in software. And the operating system needs to keep up. It needs to be patched, it needs to be updated, new releases have to happen. And all of these things have to happen symbiotically. The operating system needs to keep getting more and more advanced to keep up with innovation.

Innovation and commerce are as powerful tools for creating social progress as they are for driving technological advancement.