Ken Liu Quotes

Every technological revolution takes about 50 years.

As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.

I wrote 'Time of the Dark' in 1978 and 'The Silent Tower' in 1984, so the thing that sticks out for me is how totally technology has changed. I suppose that's the great peril for real-world crossovers.

Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.

The problem is that there are very few technologies that essentially haven't changed for 60, 70 years.

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.

Technology is the fashion of the '90s. It affects everyone, and everyone is interested in it - either from fear of being left behind or because they have a real need to use technology.

Technology is rooted in the past. It dominates the present and tends into the future. It is a real historical movement - one of the great movements which shape and represent their epoch.

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it's like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

Mass application of technological innovations, which constitutes much of the distinctive substance of modern economic growth, is closely connected with the further progress of science, in its turn the basis for additional advance in technology.

When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago.

Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.

Whenever culture has gone through a radical change, as ours has - from industrial age to information age - there are people who will deny that things have changed; they resist it and refuse to change.

A society without civil, political, and property rights may indeed find it difficult to innovate innovation outside the military sector, but it often has a relatively easy time adopting technologies that have already been developed elsewhere.

We presumably believe that most of the technological progress over the arc of humanity to date has been good. I don't see any argument to go back to 1600.

People tend to overestimate the short-term impact of technological change. In the short-term, it's not going to make that much of a difference.

With any advent in technology, any technological innovation, there is the good and the bad.

Putting our heads in the sand won't stop the inexorable advancement of technology.

For example, we have developed an artistic and a literary culture. Nevertheless, the ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy.

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

There's been resistance to every new technology that's ever been introduced. When books came out hundreds of years ago, there were complaints that it would destroy the oral tradition. Some of those fears were justified, but it didn't stop the rise of the written word. And books have proven to be incredibly useful.

I don't believe that government is good at picking technology, particularly technology that is changing. By the time you get it done and go through democracy, it's so outdated.

The computer environment is radically different today. In the 1980s, it was like the Wild West, with a lot of open territory. Now, the cowboys have moved out and the farmers have moved in.

The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.