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Peter Thiel Quotes about Technology

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Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.

Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.

Peter Thiel
Unique, Technology, Competition
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters (2014). “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future”, p.123, Crown Business

People don't want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology - all these areas where the progress has been a lot more limited than people think. And the question is why.

Peter Thiel
Believe, Technology, Thinking

A lot of the key to Apple's succes is Designing technology in order to hide it.

Peter Thiel
Technology, Keys, Order

If people were super-optimistic about technology there would be no reason to be pessimistic about the future.

Peter Thiel
Optimistic, Technology, People
Interviewed with Victoria Brown, bigthink.com. November 15, 2010.

In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms—from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy.’ . . . We are in a deadly race between politics and technology. . . . The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.

Peter Thiel
Fate, Technology, Our World
"The Education of a Libertarian". www.cato-unbound.org. April 13, 2009.

Technology and capitalism are very much linked. I think that capitalism probably works best in a technologically progressing society.

Peter Thiel
Technology, Thinking, Progress
Source: bigthink.com

In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.

Peter Thiel
Technology, World, Globalization
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters (2014). “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future”, p.9, Crown Business

I think China thinks information technology is less important than we think it is in the US, economically, and more important politically. And so Chinese internet companies are extremely political, they're protected behind the great firewall of China, and investment in Alibaba is good as long as Jack Ma stays in the good graces of the Chinese communist party. Alibaba is largely copying various business models from the US; they have combined some things in interesting new ways, but I think it's fundamentally a business that works because of the political protection you get in China.

Peter Thiel
Party, Thinking, Technology
Source: www.businessinsider.com

My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more.

Peter Thiel
Technology, Thinking, People
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters (2014). “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future”, p.9, Crown Business

It is sort of a bit of a caricature of capitalism, that it's always this zero-sum game where you have winners and losers. Silicon Valley, the technology industry at its best, creates a situation where everybody can be a winner.

Peter Thiel
Zero, Technology, Games
Interview with Victoria Brown, bigthink.com. November 15, 2010.

One of the reasons I think people are increasingly nervous about U.S. debt is because they think that we are not actually digging ourselves out of the hole, but instead are digging ourselves into a deeper and deeper hole and will not be able to pay it back because we're not actually creating the new technologies that will enable us to pay back and the money somehow is not really being invested in the future or in progress.

Peter Thiel
Technology, Thinking, Creating
Source: bigthink.com

Technology is probably the single biggest driver of productivity gains for the developed countries. For example, I think it's much more important than free trade.

Peter Thiel
Country, Technology, Thinking
Source: bigthink.com

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