James Mirrlees Quotes

You know, I believe that technology is the great leveler. Technology permits anybody to play. And in some ways, I think technology - it's not only a great tool for democratization, but it's a great tool for eliminating prejudice and advancing meritocracies.

It turns out that the greatly underestimated downside of technological progress is a fractured world.

Most of our technology issues aren't partisan.

One thing I want to do is get Silicon Valley to think harder about those who have been left behind by the technology revolution. It has created huge winners for those who are able to understand it and are adept at it. But it has also displaced a tremendous number of jobs.

I'm not against the virtual world; it's fascinating, but I don't like the way they try to impose it on us. It's a thing imposed by rich countries.

It used to be that the only ones with access to cutting-edge technology were top government labs, big companies and the ultra-rich. It was simply too expensive for the rest of us to afford.

One tech-related concern with religion is that it appears to be a positive feedback loop to the accelerating rich-poor gap, as the disenfranchised opt out of modernity.

Technology is not going to be perceived by different classes of people in the same way.

Tech innovation is something societies have to pursue as vigorously as they can. We have to innovate civically and socially at the same rate; otherwise, you create unfortunate disruptions, and that's where you have people opposing technological innovations.

I think technology is spreading, and I think one's experience of technology is going to relate increasingly to class - not so much to country.

We're building what I call 'software apartheid.' We're in the process of creating a divided society: those who can use technology on one side, and those who can't on the other. And it happens to divide neatly along economic lines.

When I tell people I don't own a mobile phone and wouldn't know how to text, they react as though I have just confessed that I can't read.

The Americans provide still more advanced military assets and equipment; the Europeans are lagging behind. And eventually it will be difficult to co-operate even if you had the political will to co-operate because of the technological gap.

I like computers. I like the Internet. It's a tool that can be used. But don't be misled into thinking that these technologies are anything other than aspects of a degenerate economic system.

I think there's a great homogenizing force that software imposes on people and limits the way they think about what's possible on the computer. Of course, it's also a great liberating force that makes possible, you know, publishing and so forth, and standards, and so on.

Technology is not neutral.

As we develop and get quicker with technology in America, it's like we're downgrading if you look at the investment in education... that's the thing that worries me.

Technology produces a new division of haves and have nots.

Distributed technology does not necessarily lead to distributed economics.

We demonstrated that the Web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places. [The Web] has ended up producing—with no deliberate action of the people who designed the platform—a large-scale emergent phenomenon which is anti-human.

I proudly tell people, 'I have no computer,' so as not to be ashamed of having no computer.

As we contemplate a world which is still choosing to deploy technological innovation in a way that deepens inequality and divisions within and between nations, we need to set global foundations back on track.

If you look at all the technology we're interconnected with every day, all this complex technology that connects humanity, it actually doesn't connect us.

The Internet was supposed to bring people together, but it's created big divisions.

I don't really engage with that world of technology, which might be to my detriment.