Tyler Cowen Quotes

Every time you think all the technology that had been created already, all you have to do is look around and then there's someone new who's born with a new idea.

We should favor innovation and freedom over regulation.

Don’t just think about the technology available today, but the technology that would be 10 times better in the future.

Somewhere in that 20-year period, I would assume that there will be some basically new approach that will begin to cut into it, but it's got a long time.

The reality is regulation often lags behind innovation.

I just know that I'm innovative. I'm a quick thinker... In Washington, I just want to be a senator who finds a way to drive change and not figure out a way to conform.

To me, innovations are the wheel, fire, language, movable type. There are not 3 million innovations; there are 3 million inventions.

Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public.

An innovation is one of those things that society looks at and says, if we make this part of the way we live and work, it will change the way we live and work.

I am personally a big believer that technology is the biggest driver of human development, and if you can use technology to benefit people, then that's the best business you can have.

Everybody's trying to repeat the past with the new network, with new devices and new tools. Why not make something brand-new?

Users think they know what they want, but you get the horseless carriage effect where you're getting asked for a faster horse.

We can go up or we can do down. I think generally the world is going on an upward swing. We're in a part of a cycle where people are discovering more. The communications are better. We're getting more into the subtle electricities that control the universe.

Obsolescence is the key to innovation.

Somebody is going to find a way digitally that is just as innovative. In the end, the tools can change, but there is always someone who can think of something cool to do.

What hermeneutics teaches is that progress comes from being exposed to different points of views because there's no point of view that is right for all situations and all times. And even if it's superior to the others, you can enrich it by drawing on others or thinking: "Why is that wrong and how do I improve my approach? How do I come up with a better approach?" So that's essential for innovation just like it is in technology.

We're changing the world with technology.

I really think that technology has the greatest potential to accelerate happiness of most things in the world

You know, whatever it takes. It's very important obviously from an economic point of view because of the need for innovation, for progress, to improve the standard of living of people. But I also think it's a critical issue in geopolitics too.

That's why I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete. I think that's one of Apple's challenges, really. When two young people walk in with the next thing, are we going to embrace it and say this is fantastic? Are you going to be willing to drop our models, or are we going to explain it away? I think we'll do better, because we're completely aware of it and we make it a priority.

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

I remain hopeful that science, innovation and kindness will come to the fore as things become more and more tense in parts of the world. I think what you are seeing in the world right now is kind of a leveling or an attempt to level the playing field.

The world is littered with corpses that predicted technology in a particular arena was done. If there's another gigantic step change out there, we don't yet know what it is.

We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.

Science is progressing at such a rapid rate that when you make a prediction and think you are ahead of your time by 100 years you may be ahead of your time by 10 at most.