Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear.
Interpretation
New inventions are often celebrated initially but may later cause anxiety and concern.
Bertolt Brecht's quote reflects the dual nature of technological advancements, where the initial excitement over innovation quickly shifts to apprehension about its consequences. This highlights the complex relationship society has with progress, depicting how inventions can simultaneously inspire hope and invoke fear regarding their impact on life and thought.
In practice
During a technology conference, a speaker might quote this to discuss the societal impacts of artificial intelligence.
The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs.... Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree. Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other's faces.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
Until computers and robots make quantum advances, they basically remain adding machines: capable only of doing things in which all the variables are controlled and predictable.
I would play games long enough to discover what games were doing and how they were doing it. And then I'd spend the rest of my time building.
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.
Our new technologies, combined with our numbers, have made us, collectively, a force of nature
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