Noam Chomsky Quotes

Not for the first time Richard reflected that this age's vaunted 'communications industry' had chiefly provided people and nations with the means of frightening to death and simultaneously boring to extinction themselves and each other.

Communications devices were always used to effect change, to effect revolution. Telephone, telegraph - these all seemed like very big enhancements at the time.

When people are connected, we can just do some great things. They have the opportunity to get access to jobs, education, health, communications. We have the opportunity to bring the people we care about closer to us. It really makes a big difference.

People always think they're in the middle of a revolution while they tend not to realize the enormity of a change that has happened in the past. The telegraph was a revolution, but who looks at it that way these days? The telegraph sped up the transportation of messages over long distances by a huge factor.

Letters had always defeated distance, but with the coming of e-mail, time seemed to be vanquished as well.

You know, when my dad was a racing fan in Australia he would follow Jack Brabham and sometimes only hear if he won two days after a race - when the result finally appeared in his newspaper. These days I can tweet something and it's all over the world in seconds.

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

When you stop to realize that Abraham Lincoln was probably never seen by more than 400 people in a single evening, and that I can enter over 40 million homes in a single evening due to the power of television, you have to admit the situation is not normal.

I believe the continually advancing Information Revolution will lend us the wisdom and strength to address humanity's previously unsolvable problems and help us make a positive impact on all of society.

Worldwide access to electronic parts has truly opened up the opportunity for innovation for engineers of all levels. It's an incredible time to be alive.

Communication has changed so rapidly in the last 20 years, it's almost impossible to predict what might occur even in the next decade. E-mail, which now sends data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light, has replaced primitive forms of communication such as smoke signals, which sent data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light.

The Internet has been an invaluable acquisition. I wonder how we would do without it. Information can be sent from one country to the other within the space of minutes, crossing channels, crossing oceans, crossing continents. But still, we can't compete with the might and power and wealth of those who dominate, control, and own the means of the production of information today.

The big change, the really radical change in communication, was in the late 19th century. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph is astronomical. Everything since then has been small increments, including the internet. So you don't have to wait for a letter to get to England in six weeks, you have almost instant communication. That was an enormous shift.

Technology to me does two things: it increases the velocity of communication and increases the number of people who can participate. That's it. That's really all technology for our entire history has ever done.

Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.

A Masai warrior on a cellphone in the middle of Kenya has better mobile comm than President Reagan did 25 years ago.

No communication technology has ever disappeared, but instead becomes increasingly less important as the technological horizon widens.

Information technology has brought people much closer together than ever before, providing a democratizing and mostly stabilizing influence.

Technological civilizations don't last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.

Language as the technology of human extension, whose powers of division and separation we know so well, may have been the "Tower of Babel" by which men sought to scale the highest heavens. Today computers hold out the promise of a means of instant tr

Communications are making this one world. Back in the day, 400-500 years ago, nobody knew what anyone else was doing. It's on the 6 O'Clock news now. Now we can say, Oh, that's the way they live. Oh, they do that!! Opportunities, the chance to bring about change, it's all based on communication. Communication and jet planes.

I grew up having to piss in a bucket ’cos there was no indoor shitter, and now I have these computerised Japanese super-loo things that have heated seats and wash and blow-dry your arse at the touch of a button. Give it a couple of years and I’ll have a bog with a robot arm that pulls out my turds, so I don’t have to strain.

I doubt that pornography has been good for the advancement of society, but I suspect it’s done wonders for the advancement of computer technology.

If I wanted to connect like I do now, I'd have to write 500,000 letters, get 500,000 stamps, send them out and wait for them all to come back. This stuff is instantaneous. I can see if someone is having a bad day and send them a smiley face and have an effect on them. It's fun, but it's also a very powerful thing.

Machines already are much smarter than us at so many things. I mean, try to multiply two 10-digit numbers with each other or, you know, sift through a thousand documents. So there's lots of things that machines are better at including in mental task than us. There's many more that they're not as good at, but the direction is pretty obvious and the progress is clear.