Jef Raskin Quotes

What more chilling indictment of the modern world is there than this: that the condition of the smartphone user is that of a dumb animal. Moooo!

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.

These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish.

We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action of the machine we have created to serve us.

The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free

I can't be a slave to the machine, you feel like you're in the matrix.

There's nothing worse in life than to sit there and be the victim of a process that's outside your control.

With all the abundance we have of computers and computing, what is scarce is human attention and time.

I don't deal well with being told what to wear and sit on a mark. It just feels like my soul is being ripped out.

I will not call that person happy who knows no rest because of his enemies, who is the butt of fun by all and for whom no one has any empathy, who is as if held on a leash by others, who has lost himself in hedonistic pursuits, who preys on those weaker to him and wags his tail for his superiors.

To be on the other side of the law-and-order machine in this country is awful. It is dehumanizing and degrading and deforming. It fills you with a helpless rage because, once there, you can only make things worse for yourself by speaking up.

My generation is so tied up in television, computers, and video games. When we were born, MTV was already there. It was normal.

I hate technology and cellphones. I hate having to have one all of the time. I don't tweet or buzz or bing or whatever! It's a conscious thing - I hate the way that it can take over young people's lives.

Deskilling devices - they make us dumber. We're immersed in a system that now requires the use of a cell phone just to get around, just to function, and so the logic of that cell phone has been imposed on us.

I think smartphones are one of humanity's most remarkable creations: computers are amazing enough, but a supercomputer you can carry in your pocket and communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere... it's no wonder they're troublingly addictive.

As much as technology has made me so much more efficient, enabling me to run a small but global company from where I happen to be, at times it feels like the technology is running me, as opposed to the other way round.

A lot of people need technology to survive. And if you're renting it and you don't own it or have control over it, you're at the mercy of whoever does.

Wi-fi and all the systems we are introducing into our lives are destroying our own natural electro-magnetic fields.

I think many people have this sense that something about modern society - the screens, the noise, the traffic, the constant busyness - has approached a point where living in the world feels somewhat unhealthy.

Most people say they're slaves, but in my opinion, to say that I am a slave is to take ownership of actually being a slave - to be a tool, be a thing. Basically cattle.

People who hand over democracy in exchange for economic security end up losing both things.

It's as if all identity has been stolen from them, except their identity as slaves.

What a terrible thing could be freedom. Trees were free when they were uprooted by the wind; ships were free when they were torn from their moorings; men were free when they were cast out of their homes—free to starve, free to perish of cold and hunger.

Technologies can be liberating, but it can also be a tool of coercion and control.

My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side.