Is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations to this lethal waste?
David R. BrowerRead
What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth but also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on without public consent.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the need for public consent regarding technological advancements, drawing attention to the limits of both growth and technology.
David R. Brower's quote highlights the critical importance of public engagement and approval in the development and application of technology. It suggests that while we can strive for growth and advancements, we must recognize that both growth and technology have inherent limits, and it is essential to ensure that technological progress aligns with societal values and public consensus to prevent potential negative consequences.
Themes
TechnologyPublic ConsentGrowthLimitsSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about sustainable development, you might say, 'As David R. Brower wisely pointed out, we must not let technology evolve without our collective agreement.'
More from David R. Brower
All quotes →Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.
David R. BrowerRead
Without wilderness, the world's a cage.
David R. BrowerRead
To me, a wilderness is where the flow of wildness is essentially uninterrupted by technology; without wilderness the world is a cage.
David R. BrowerRead
Similar quotes
Steampunk appeals to the idea of uniqueness, to the one-off item, while every mainstream consumer technology of recent years is about putting human beings into ever more granular, packageable and mass-produced identities so that they can be sold or sold to, perfectly mapped and understood.
Nick HarkawayRead
In those days [batch processing] programmers never even documented their programs, because it was assumed that nobody else would ever use them. Now, however, time-sharing had made exchanging software trivial: you just stored one copy in the public repository and therby effectively gave it to the world. Immediately people began to document their programs and to think of them as being usable by others. They started to build on each other's work.
Robert FanoRead
The inside of a computer is as dumb as hell but it goes like mad!
Richard P. FeynmanRead
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
Edward R. MurrowRead
We don't pay a whole lot of attention to the Internet until people have played the game - then we pay a lot of attention to whether people liked it. We read through it and see it, but we don't take it into consideration. ... [The Internet] is not going to dictate the direction of where the game goes.
Shigeru MiyamotoRead
Software companies should take more responsibility for security holes, especially in browsers and e-mail clients. There are some straightforward things the industry should be doing right now to fix things, and I don't know why they haven't been done yet.
Tim Berners-LeeRead