We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the necessity for humans to adapt to the rapidly changing environment created by technology and societal evolution.
Norbert Wiener's quote emphasizes the profound impact that changes in our surroundings—especially those driven by technological advancements—have on human existence. As our environment evolves, driven by our own innovations and modifications, we face the imperative to alter our behaviors, thoughts, and even identities to thrive in this new reality. It suggests a reciprocal relationship between humans and their environment, where the modifications we make necessitate personal adaptation for survival and success.
In practice
In a speech about the future of work, one could say, 'We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.'
In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.
The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.
I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what'
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. _x000D_ A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.
Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.
Laws on hate speech and hate crimes do important work in a world that has been rooted in racism and bigotry since the inception of this country, which was not founded on ideals of justice.
If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
Often I have heard the taunt that suffragists are women who have failed to find any normal outlet for their emotions, and are therefore soured and disappointed beings. This is probably not true of any suffragist, and it is most certainly not true of me. My home life and relations have been as nearly ideal as possible in this imperfect world.
I believed in the goodness of the Australian people; I believed they did not want to be attacking each other, and from those thoughts, I got the idea of Reconciliation in the campaign slogan and of turning this into something practical by calling a summit to bring representatives of all sections of society together, from the wealthiest to the poor.
I like every individual editor, designer, marketing and publicity person I deal with, but I don't like what publishers, corporately, are doing to the ecology of the book world. It's damaging, and it should change.
Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.
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