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Lewis Thomas Quotes about Technology

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Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for

Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.

Lewis Thomas
Technology, Space, Would Be
Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a community can become so organized that they end up resembling, in effect, one big collective brain. Our own exploding population and communication technology are leading us that way.

Lewis Thomas
Communication, Technology, People

Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only saved by music from being overwhelmed by nonsense.

Lewis Thomas
Technology, Use, Information
Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

It is when physicians are bogged down by their incomplete technologies, by the innumerable things they are obliged to do in medicine when they lack a clear understanding of disease mechanisms, that the deficiencies of the health-care system are most conspicuous. If I were a policy-maker, interested in saving money for health care over the long haul, I would regard it as an act of high prudence to give high priority to a lot more basic research in biologic science.

Lewis Thomas
Technology, Medicine, Long
Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

We need science, more and better science, not for its technology, not for leisure, not even for health or longevity, but for the hope of wisdom which our kind of culture must acquire for its survival.

Lewis Thomas
Technology, Survival, Needs
Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. We will be lucky if we can postpone the search for new technologies for a while, until we have discovered some satisfactory things to do with the extra time.

Lewis Thomas
Technology, Extra Time, Long
Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our nature to do.

Lewis Thomas
Technology, Use, Century
Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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