Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that our aspirations and visions of the future are often intertwined with technological advancements.
Neil Degrasse Tyson's quote reflects the idea that when we envision the future, we tend to imagine a world enhanced by technology and innovation. It emphasizes the human tendency to dream about advancements that improve our lives, suggesting that our dreams are significantly influenced by the gadgets and inventions we aspire to create or encounter.
In practice
During a tech conference, a speaker might use this quote to highlight the impact of technology on future innovations.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
I am a futurist, projecting trends in science into the next decades and century, but ironically my two daughters - one is a neuroscientist and the other is a pastry chef - tell me that my taste in music is positively prehistoric.
I don't believe that the ultimate theory will come by steady work along existing lines. We need something new. We can't predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already!
Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.
In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns.
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
Inside of a living cell there are thousands of proteins that enable it to make more of itself and make your malaria drug, for instance. We don't understand those. We don't understand how they work together.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.