Resource efficiency is the wrong metric. We should use nature as the measure, using nature's wisdom as a template for our economic systems.
Douglas TompkinsRead
If you just hold your cell phone for 30 seconds and think backwards through its production, you have the entire techno-industrial culture wrapped up there. You can't have that device without everything that goes with it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the complex cultural and industrial processes behind everyday technology.
Douglas Tompkins highlights the vast interconnectedness of technology and culture by suggesting that a simple act of holding a cell phone prompts reflection on the multitude of processes, resources, and societal impacts involved in its production. It serves as a reminder that our modern conveniences come with a significant history and a network of cultural implications that shape our lives.
Themes
TechnologyCultureProductionCell PhoneSociety
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the impact of smartphones on modern society.
More from Douglas Tompkins
All quotes →I just realized at least what I was doing was making a lot of stuff that nobody needed and pushing a consumerist society. So I went to do something else.
Douglas TompkinsRead
The byproduct of the main thrust to protect the biodiversity of a given place is that you get especially young people out to the parks, because it will be future generations that will have to value these landscapes and these ecosystems and make sure that nobody is changing the law.
Douglas TompkinsRead
Similar quotes
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
David BowieRead
The fear isn't that big data discriminates. We already know that it does. It's that you don't know if you've been discriminated against.
Kate CrawfordRead
Whenever a technology enables people to organize at a pace that wasn't before possible, new kinds of politics emerge.
Howard RheingoldRead
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
Gottfried LeibnizRead
Humans don't 'need' math-based cryptocurrencies when dealing with other humans. We walk slowly, talk slowly, and buy big things. Credit cards, cash, wires, checks - the world seems fine.
Naval RavikantRead
It's hard to pay attention these days because of multiple affects of the information technology nowadays. You tend to develop a faster, speedier mind, but I don't think it's necessarily broader or smarter.
Robert RedfordRead