Technological Maturity Quotes

It would seem to me that by the time a race has achieved deep space capability it would have matured to a point where it would have no thought of dominating another intelligent species.

So many technologies start out with a burst of idealism, democratization, and opportunity, and over time, they close down and become less friendly to entrepreneurship, to innovation, to new ideas. Over time, the companies that become dominant take more out of the ecosystem than they put back in.

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.

We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often "crash" when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I'm sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for "productivity"

Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.

I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.

Curiously, once technology gets boring, the social effects get interesting.

We've invented most of the stuff that we need and now we're just messing about

I started working at a point in history when digital computers were becoming mature, and before that, there were no such machines.

Certain product categories become less attractive for us because, as they become mature, they become low-cost, and hence, there is less to invent. There is less to invent in a television, whereas in heath technology, there is a lot to invent. So we wanted to put our innovative power to work where it really matters.

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