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.
You have to immerse yourself into a product and use it in order to really understand it and that's why I have a new cellphone every month or two.
The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.
The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy?
Few industries have the ability to transform society like tech, yet too few companies are asking the questions or working on the problems that would create meaningful social change.
The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. ... The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.
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