Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.
Interpretation
Television significantly transformed society in ways comparable to historic inventions.
Russell Baker emphasizes the monumental impact of television on human life, likening it to the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press. Each of these inventions altered the course of history and fundamentally changed how people communicate, learn, and interact, positioning television as a pivotal cultural and technological advancement of the century.
In practice
A keynote speech at a technology conference about the evolution of media.
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.
Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.
Objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
So many people for so many years have promoted technology as the answer to everything. The economy wasn't growing: technology. Poor people: technology. Illness: technology. As if, somehow, technology in and of itself would be a solution. Yet machine values are not always human values.
I find that writing unit tests actually increases my programming speed
It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.
Now anybody can make music at home, and you can hear music on any computer without having to buy it. Everything is apparently better with all the machines we have now, but at the same time, the quality of life is not improving.
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Mark my word - A combination airplane and motor car is coming.
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