There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.
Interpretation
Technology has flaws imposed by humans that must be addressed to improve society.
Rene Dubos highlights the inherent flaws or 'demons' within technology that result from human actions and intentions. He suggests that for society to fully realize the humane and civilized ideals that were prominent in the eighteenth century, humans must take responsibility and work towards rectifying these technological issues.
In practice
In a technology ethics seminar while discussing human impact on tech.
The wooing of the Earth thus implies much more than converting the wilderness into humanized environments. It means also preserving natural environments in which to experience mysteries transcending daily life and from which to recapture, in a Proustian kind of remembrance, the awareness of the cosmic forces that have shaped humankind.
Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.
Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place.
I said the screen will kill the reader, and it has: the movie screen in the beginning, the television screen, and now the coup de grace, the computer screen.
As we move into an era in which personal devices are seen as proxies for public needs, we run the risk that already-existing inequities will be further entrenched. Thus, with every big data set, we need to ask which people are excluded. Which places are less visible? What happens if you live in the shadow of big data sets?
All countries will eventually need to rebuild their growth models around digital technologies and the human capital that supports their deployment and expansion.
People have to be able to make money off their brains and their hearts. Or else we're all going to starve, and it's the machines that'll get good.
If I had time and a hammer, I'd track down every bootleg copy and smash it.
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
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