Machines Quotes - Page 32

In the end I came to see that the true prophet of the modern world was Samuel Butler: when he suggested that the machine was an evolutionary development, destined to supersede man as the dominant species and reduce him to greenfly status, the status of machine-minder, homo mechanicus instead of homo sapiens; and to modify his nature accordingly.

You can get the oldest drum machine out and whack out four sounds like a kick, snare, and two types of high-hat, and try and come up with the freshest thing on the spot. The gear can guide you - you can choose one bit of gear and it's obviously got its restrictions and its limitations, but at the same time, you've got to exploit what it's capable of and what it's best used for.

How do we beat her? I asked. You pretty much don’t, Horus said. She is the incarnation of the sun’s wrath. Back in the day when Ra was active, she would have been much more impressive, but still. .She’s unstoppable. A born killer. A slaying machine— “Okay, I get it!” I yelled.

You know how hard it is to feel like an extreme falcon-headed combat machine when somebody calls you "chicken man"?

Wha-what?" Her eyes fluttered open. "Nothing," I shouted. "We're being followed by a slaying machine. Go back to sleep.

I've been offered big money to promote machines. And high-protein diets, when that was really popular. There was always some new powder or diet plan that somebody wanted to put my name on.

You see, I get such fun out of thinking that I don't want to destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.

The way to get killed around machinery was to take things for granted.

As the financial experts all over the world use machines to unwind Gordian knots of financial arrangements so complex that only machines can make - 'derive' - and trade them, we have to wonder: Are we living in a bad sci-fi movie? Is the Matrix made of credit default swaps?

If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

In viewing the scheme of redemption, I seem like one viewing a vast and complicated machine of exquisite contrivance; what I comprehend of it is wonderful, what I do not, is, perhaps, more so still.

A human and a bicycle are the perfect synthesis of body and machine.

As a child I was very into gadgets and machines and robots.

The idea of experimenting with machines to create art was always something I tinkered with.

Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being?

Machinery is aggressive. The weaver becomes a web, the machinist a machine. If you do not use the tools, they use you. All tools are in one sense edge-tools, and dangerous.

The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody.

I wonder…,” she said, “if there was such a thing as time machines, would anyone ever use them to go to the future?

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

A man who says that men are machines may be a great scientist. A man who says he is a machine is 'depersonalized' in psychiatric jargon.

I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best of them. But put a deadline on me and I start getting writer's block.

In Harvest of Stars, there is this notion, not original with me of course, that it will become possible to download at least the basic aspects of a human personality into a machine program.

When I arrive at our training ground at Borussia Dortmund, everybody could hear just that a few seconds before I can actually be seen. Everybody knows it's me. I love to hear the machine working.

The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual.