Virginia Postrel Quotes

Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.

The iPhone is made on a global scale, and it blends computers, the Internet, communications, and artificial intelligence in one blockbuster, game-changing innovation. It reflects so many of the things that our contemporary world is good at - indeed, great at.

When you look at the actual data on technological innovation, one thing you see is that what I call the 'low-hanging fruit' has been exhausted. So radio, flush toilets, electricity, and automobiles - a lot of very basic inventions - have spread to almost all households.

The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington.

For better or worse, that is true with any new innovation, certainly any new technological innovation. There's many good things that come out of it, but also some bad things. All you can do is try to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff.

How did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us - computers and cell phones and so on? There were a bunch of ideas, and the good ones grew and prospered. And the bad ones were pretty ruthlessly weeded out.

In a world being transformed by technology, good science is vital to good diplomacy.

Technology has become our culture

Like it or not, the United States is a revolutionary power. Whether the government is trying to overthrow foreign dictators is almost irrelevant. American society is about the most revolutionary force on the planet. The Internet is more subversive than the CIA in its prime. The dynamism of American Society is constantly creating new businesses, new technologies, new ideas and new social models. These innovations travel, and they make trouble when they do.

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

We adapt to technological progress by raising our minimum standards of living and working to stay above this rising threshold.

… post-industrial society

All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations

This [the advent of radio] was the first time in the history of mankind that people in different places heard the same thing at the same time.

The technological transformation of society contains within itself the dynamo of its own management, but only if we create laws and regulations to permit the information revolution to wash through our democratic structures.

As companies become bigger, the global environment more competitive, and the rate of disruptive technological innovation ever faster, the value to shareholders of attracting the best possible CEO increases correspondingly.

We know that the hardest work is to keep yourself open to the world that technology hasn't tamed.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition - put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes - is improving because of innovation.

We love serious technology innovations, and there is a strong bias towards large technology innovations that are sort of disruptive to the current market.

I think technology can change every country regardless of political party.

The next great technology revolution might be around the corner, but it won't automatically improve most people's lives. That will depend on politics, which is indeed ugly but also inescapable.

The Internet isn't just itself a revolution - it sometimes starts them, too.

Technology business increasingly becomes difficult to predict because technology itself is accelerating in change, and human nature and markets are more stagnant and static. But the dynamic engine of technological innovation continues unabated.

Modernity is disruptive, and I endorse that.

From the first time that I went over to China, I think I was around the age of 17, 18, and just going there and seeing that their technology being years ahead of ours in America, it sparked something with me back then.