Steve Jurvetson Quotes

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.

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.

Technology produces a new division of haves and have nots.

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.

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

Technology has transformed how we live, learn and work, but not everyone has been able to participate in these developments.

As we move into an era in which personal devices are seen as proxies for public needs, we run the risk that already-existing inequities will be further entrenched. Thus, with every big data set, we need to ask which people are excluded. Which places are less visible? What happens if you live in the shadow of big data sets?

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.

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

You either use the Internet or you are backward.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

I'm interested in illuminating the enormous disparity between vast poverty and the tiny upper class... This vast inequity is unfair by definition, and I am interested in illuminating that and, where possible, changing that.

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.

Nothing appeared rich but the churches, nobody fat but the clergy.

The forces of globalization and religious marginalization are out to get us.

We must close the digital divide.

We will not settle for a state that will settle for an underclass.

Globalization has down sides because it leaves so many people behind.

If it is held to be morally wrong and anti-social for one man to possess huge estates, which he may develop or not as he chooses, while hundreds of others nearby are relegated to landlessness, why should one people acquire, by similar accident of birth or achievement, a claim to an inordinate share of the good things of life and a right to exclude from them other less fortunate peoples, white, black, or yellow?

We are very, very thoughtful about once an economic system creates maldistribution of wealth, thinking about how we redistribute it, but we need to pay attention to why that system is excluding people to create that maldistribution in the first place.

Most of our technology issues aren't partisan.

One of the issues we face here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is a sense that the people all around us are as conversant in startup and tech culture as we are. But we need to remember, and remind ourselves repeatedly, that we're a small minority in a larger population.

There's a large risk to our society if a group of people doesn't have access to technology or even the desire to get on the Net and see what opportunities are out there. Technology can be a great equalizer.

As the world has changed through globalisation and technology, it has left many feeling left behind.