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.
When I was trying to popularize the concept of the Internet - ten or 15 years ago - I came up with this concept of "the 5 Cs." Services needed to have content, context, community, commerce, and connectivity. After that, when I was trying to think of what the key management principles were to build into the culture, I started talking about the Ps. The P's were things like passion, perseverance, perspective and people. I think the people aspect is really the most important one.
The internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we're part of the medium. The scary thing is, we'll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.
Engineers and entrepreneurs are fundamentally dissatisfied with the way the world is and want to make it better. There are so many things you could do with technology if you can match it up with real problems.
An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in.
Young people do not watch television; they are on the Internet.
Apple's Industrial Design team is harder to get into than the Illuminati, and part of the reason is because no one leaves. In the last 15 years, not one of the 18 designers has ditched Apple for greener pastures.
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