A Quote by Poul Anderson

It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense-there may be totally different cultures using identical tools-but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.

Poul Anderson

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Absolute Another Basic Basically Capital Capital Investment Collectivism Cultures Determined Different Different Cultures Elbow Enterprise Free Free Enterprise High Identical Industry Inevitably Interstellar Investment Knowledge Large Limited Machines May Mechanics Name Needs Planet Possessing Possibilities Race Room Sense Settle Single Society Spaceships Structure Technology Tend Tools Totally Toward Trade Truism Using War Will Without

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Poul Anderson
American - Writer
November 25, 1926 - July 31, 2001

No art takes places without inspiration. Every artist also needs effective knowledge of his or her tools (e.g., does a certain brush function well with a particular kind of paint?). What's more, artists need effective techniques for using those tools. Likewise, to express ourselves skillfully with maximum efficiency and minimum effort, we need to investigate the most effective ways of using the mind and body since, in the end, they are the only "tools" we truly possess in life.

H. E Davey

As our technology evolves, we will have the capacity to reach new, ever-increasing depths. The question is what kind of technology, in the end, do we want to deploy in the far reaches of the ocean? Tools of science, ecology and documentation, or the destructive tools of heavy industry?

Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

Industrial Society is not merely one containing 'industry,' large-scale productive units capable of supplying man's material needs in a way which can eliminate poverty: it is also a society in which knowledge plays a part wholly different from that which it played in earlier social forms, and which indeed possesses a quite different type of knowledge. Modern science is inconceivable outside an industrial society: but modern industrial society is equally inconceivable without modern science. Roughly, science is the mode of cognition of industrial society, and industry is the ecology of science.

Ernest Gellner

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Thomas Carlyle

The only thing I knew how to do without a lot of money was repairing tools. I actually started making and repairing tools for machines.

Stef Wertheimer

My list of basic tools is a partial answer to the question about what has changed: Over the past few years, large numbers of programmers have come to depend on elaborate tools to interface code with systems facilities.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Words are the basic tools, if you are a writer. But why? Why do you choose one set of tools rather than another?

James D. Houston

Tools may limit the user, but the utility of tools is limited by the skill of the user.

Leonard J. V. Compagno

The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena.

Jaron Lanier

The best investment is in the tools of one's own trade.

Benjamin Franklin

There is a race between the increasing complexity of the systems we build and our ability to develop intellectual tools for understanding their complexity. If the race is won by our tools, then systems will eventually become easier to use and more reliable. If not, they will continue to become harder to use and less reliable for all but a relatively small set of common tasks. Given how hard thinking is, if those intellectual tools are to succeed, they will have to substitute calculation for thought.

Leslie Lamport

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We make tools for people. Tools to create, tools to communicate. The age we're living in, these tools surprise you. ... That's why I love what we do. Because we make these tools, and we're constantly surprised with what people do with them.

Steve Jobs

Our ability to study the brain has been limited because of our tools and our tools have only allowed us to look at one neurotransmitter and we haven't looked so much into co-localization and co-release of transmitters. Our thinking is hampered by our tools.

Carl Hart

We have the tools, the intellect, the will to create a caring global culture. It isn't going to come without a recognition of the power of the psychedelic experience. The psychedelic experience is the birth right of every human being on the planet. It is as much a basic part of each and every one of us as our sexuality, our national identity, our consciousness of self. And any society which attempts to hold back or impede this dimension of self-expression, when the history of that society is written, it will be called barbarous.

Terence McKenna

For physical goods, there are costs associated with logistics and lead times, owing to inventories and poor forecasts of the market. With digital capital-intensive technology, however, production will inevitably move toward the final market, wherever it is. This re-localization constitutes a major shift in the structure of global supply networks.

Michael Spence

A Quote by Poul Anderson

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