Technology — just a name for something that doesn't work yet
A few evenings ago in the Highbury, Chris shared with me a Douglas Adams quote (it actually turns out to be Adams quoting Bran Ferren): “technology is the name we have for stuff that doesn’t quite work yet”. A chair for example. We no longer need to think if a chair will work, or crash on us, we just use it. And it works. And then, courtesy of Jeremy Keith of Clearleft (that’s the guys who did our BCH site), I’m directed towards the very article from whence this quote comes. Complete with a number of other witty and profound insights. My favourite of which:
- everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
- anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
- anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
Written nine years ago, the article dates a little; by the same token, with the years that have passed, it reminds us what a visionary Adams was. http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html
Categories: Technology, digital, innovation
I like this similar quote from the great population geneticist J B S Haldane:
The process of acceptance has four stages:
(i) this is worthless nonsense;
(ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;
(iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;
(iv) I always said so.