Quotes / Ludd Was Right

"Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment."

—Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

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Fiction

As long as technology has a global reach, someone will have the world in the palm of his hand.

— Tracer Tong, Deus Ex

No phone, no phone, I just want to be alone today

— Cake, - "No Phone"

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

—Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Dune

Calvin's Dad: Our lives are filled with machines designed to reduce work and increase leisure. We have more leisure than any man has ever had. And what do we do with this leisure? Educate ourselves? Take up new interests? Explore? Invent? Create?
Calvin: Dad, I can't hear this commercial.
[Calvin is thrown outside]
Calvin: If it were up to my dad, leisure would be as bad as work.

— Calvin and Hobbes

"In the world I see... you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway."

— Tyler Durden, Fight Club

"These people, it's no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it could split atoms with its desire. You build egos the size of cathedrals. Fiber-opticly connect the world to every eager impulse. Grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-played fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor. Becomes his own God."

—John Milton, The Devil's Advocate

"When was the last time you felt the warmth of the Earth's sun on your naked back? Or lifted your face to the heavens, and laughed with the joy of being alive? How long since you wept at the death of a friend? Doesn't mean a thing to you, does it, Madam President? You've surrounded yourself with machines and weapons, mindless men and heartless mutoids; and when they've done your work, and the machines have done your thinking, what is there left in you that feels?!"

— Jarvik, Blake's 7, "The Harvest of Kairos"

Theotocopulos: We want to make the world safe for men!

Cabal: No one prevents you.

Theotocopulos: How can we do that when your science and inventions are perpetually changing life for us? When you're everlastingly contriving strange things? When you make what we think great, seem small? When you make what we think strong, seem feeble? We don't want you in the same world with us. We don't want this expedition! We don't want Mankind to go out to the moon and to the planets. We shall hate you more if you succeed than if you fail!

— Things to Come

Real Life (Agree)

"It was produced in late 1994. The internet already existed... However, in the not-so-distant future of "Past Tense", the potential of internet has effectively been neutered. B.C. needs Vin’s “access code” to log on to the net to see what the news is reporting. The government can cut off all internet access inside the sanctuary district. Chris talks about his “interface operating license”, as if to suggest the net has been thoroughly regulated. In short, the opportunity represented by the internet — the capacity for better communication and access to a wide range of ideas and philosophies — can easily be curtailed and restrained by broader societal pressure...it’s not too far removed from the type of censorship that occurs in China."

—Darren Mooney on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

"Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power...never have so many been manipulated so much by so few."

—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

"All our lauded technological progress — our very civilization — is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal."

—Albert Einstein

"I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons."

—Marshall McLuhan

"Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself."

—Erich Fromm

"The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization."

—Julian Assange (yes, that one)

"We have changed fundamentally,from a society t at produced a culture to a culture rooted in no real society at all. The culture we live in today pretends that media can nurture society, but our new public spaces, our 'electronic town squares' and 'cyber-communities' and publicity mills and celebrity industries, are a dismal substitute for the real thing."

—Katherine Viner, Stiffed

''"Out of a misguided reaction to the symbiotic relationship between religious fundamentalism and corporate hegemons, it's all the rage for young geeks to run around bigging up 'Science' as a substitute religion...Yet, those same hegemons control the application of science in its near-totality, and are using it to help establish broad-spectrum dominance that will be beyond all challenge.

—Christopher Loring Knowles

"It’s not any individual tool that’s a problem—it’s that the tools are all part of a deeply hierarchical system. And the people at the top of that system end up thinking they inherently deserve to be there, that they’re better than the rest of us.

— Arthur Chu, "Occupying the Throne"

"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.

— Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future (aka the "Unabomber Manifesto")

Real Life (Disagree)

"Yes, eyeglasses denialism is actually a thing."

—Rational Wiki

"The first Deus Ex tackled the philosophical quandary of whether it's possible to wear a trench coat and sunglasses without looking like a ponce, but Deus Ex: Human Revolution centralizes the debate surrounding transhuman augmentation. 'Would you,' it asks, 'supplement your body with machinery?'

What do you mean, would I? I already wear spectacles. And a wristwatch. And I always carry a phone (which I'm currently in the process of duct-taping to the side of my head). Anyone who talks about technological development being 'unnatural' deserves to be abandoned in the wilderness wearing nothing but a fig leaf."

—Zero Punctuation

"WHY DO WE NOT HAVE HOVER TRAINS HERE IN THE US? We have Amtrak trains that slow to four miles per hour when the engineer sees a particularly bendy piece of track coming up...By the way, that video includes what is arguably the dumbest YouTube comment ever, which is a bold statement, but not so bold when you read it: "You don't want maglev in the u.s. few of my friends have been on long distance train journeys in the states and all said the people and views were amazing, wouldn't see much travelling at maglev speeds and wouldn't have as much time to meet new people,, why ruin it?" Indeed. Why ruin a 27-hour train ride?"

—Drew Magary

"If you want level-headed advice about preparing for a global crisis, who better to turn to than a nude photographer who played a space creature on TV? ...It starts with Leonard Nimoy scolding the ancient Atlanteans for their hubris. This is to create a context for what comes next: this is all your fault, mankind. Your lazy dependence on transistors is what caused all this in the first place."

—Seanbaby, "10 Real Survival Guides For One Very Fake Apocalypse"

"Technocracy depends on the fetishization of automation. One of the first things to be discovered in the digital era was that the embrace of technology posed massive challenges to the orthodox views of humanity. Just as the Enlightenment provided a rationalist revolution, the Singularity, debased a concept as that is, provides a post-humanist revolution against rationalism."

—El Sandifer

" The problem with that, of course, is that what she pushes is not good information but rather misinformations...such as her claim that microwave ovens somehow destroy the nutrient content of food irretrievably and her most risible claim of all, namely that "there is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever." Given that food is made of chemicals, I wished her good luck surviving living by that particularly dumb adage."

—Orac "Food Babe Doubles Down"

"Hari's rule? "If a third grader can't pronounce it, don't eat it."

My rule? Don't base your diet on the pronunciation skills of an eight-year-old."

—Yvette d'Entremont "The "Food Babe" Blogger Is Full of Shit"

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