Vincent Massey Quotes

All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

Technology didn't just go, clunk. It was this early disease, starting with a plow, I guess, or something like that, the first tool that made it so you could do more things. The first domesticated animal, or the first wheel.

No one has ever been able to stop the process and evolution of technology, not even I.B.M. That is going to continue. Those who grab it and move ahead with it will determine the future in this industry.

Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.

If you run from technology, it will chase you.

The accumulated knowledge of materials, computing, electromagnetism, product design, and all the rest that we've learned over the last several centuries converts a few ounces of raw materials worth mere pennies into a device with more computing power than the entire planet possessed fifty years ago.

There are many men now living who were in the habit of using the age-old expression: 'It is as impossible as flying.' The discoveries in physical science, the triumphs in invention, attest the value of the process of trial and error. In large measure, these advances have been due to experimentation.

As for the "triumphs of science," let us honour, with astonishment and awe, the genius of those who invented them; but let us remember that the things themselves are as a gun or a sword, with which we can kill our enemy, but with which also our enemy can kill us.

… post-industrial society

Innovation is the key to the future, but basic research is the key to future innovation.

Who brings tomorrow into the present if not the scientists, technicians and engineers?

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone, or any other Important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others.

Innovation really is the life blood of our American economy... looking back at the stories of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers, you look at emergence to technology innovation and what it has done for our economy. We need to continue that.

The Internet, arguably the fastest world-changing invention since the Gutenberg printing press, has become the core of our social and business lives.

Technology is the future, I have seen the third industrial revolution, and we are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution.

The way to solve problems in the world is to become scientists and technologists and build things that haven't been built before and discover things that people really don't know about.

Every time there is a major shift in technology, it's been hugely exciting and scary at the same time. I have seen some really drastic changes in technology, like shooting only film to video to digital.

As humans, we've always innovated our way out of problems, whether it was the first torch to light a dark cave or the steam engine that sparked a revolution.

Science has gone a long way toward helping man to free himself from the burden of hard labor; yet, science itself is not a liberator. It creates means, not goals. It is up to men to utilize those means to achieve reasonable goals.

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

When Colin Powell showed up as Secretary of State in 2001, most State Department employees still didn't even have computers on their desks. When I got there they were not mostly permitted to have handheld devices. I mean, so you're thinking how do we operate in this new environment dominated by technology, globalizing forces? We have to change, and I can't expect people to change if I don't try to model it and lead it.

The modern technologist is less 'sorcerer' and more 'sorcerer's apprentice'.

Those who understand the steam engine and the electric telegraph spend their lives in trying to replace them with something better.

Over my career, I'd say the last 25 years; we've gone from music and computer being for 10 people in the world to having personal computers, to now being able to do amazing things on your iPhone, or with Rock Band. So, right now there's enormous capability with technology in our devices that everybody has access to.