Quotes Tagged "technological-progress"

[The] tremendous and still accelerating development of science and technology has not been accompanied by an equal development in social, economic, and political patterns...We are now...only beginning to explore the potentialities which it offers for developments in our culture outside technology, particularly in the social, political and economic fields. It is safe to predict that...such social inventions as modern-type Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism will be regarded as primitive experiments directed toward the adjustment of modern society to modern methods
Tags: zeitgeist-movement, zeitgeist, tzm, time, technology, technological-progress, structural-change, socioeconomics, socioeconomic-change, society, social-change, science, progress, peereconomy, peer-to-peer-production, peer-to-peer, patterns, p2p, modern, ideology, future, fascism, development, culture, communism, capitalism, adaption
All this is not to suggest that the growth in useful knowledge is leading us to a world of bliss. Athena's gifts were many: she gave King Cecrops the olive tree, but she also gave the city of Troy the wooden horse that led to its destruction. Technology makes people more powerful in exploiting nature, but how and for what purpose they do so remains indeterminate. If the twentieth century has shown us anything, it is that the capacity of humans for intolerance, stupidity, and selfishness has not declined as their technological power has increased.
— Joel Mokyr The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy
Tags: technological-progress, stupidity-of-man, knowledge