Quotations

We are looking for interesting quotations on technology and society or technology and communication or technology and innovation. Can be current or historical.

Please add as a comment to this page. We will periodically integrate into a bulleted list. TIA!

These quotes are from a 1998 presentation Kathy gave to some marketing people:

• “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”
  — Western Union internal memo, 1876
• Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
  — H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
• “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
  — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
• “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
  — Popular Mechanics, 1949
• “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
  — Bill Gates, 1981 *

More “old” quotations:

• “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
  – Darryl F. Zanuk, 20th Century Fox, 1946
• “Everything that can be invented, has been invented.”
  – Charles H. Duell, US Commissioner of Patents, 1899

Current quotations:

• “The internet is about people connecting to people, whether for business, politics, or socializing, That’s something we’ve all been doing since long before the internet existed. The real accomplishment is to make those connections so versatile and different that they create a social network that not only reflects your life but expands it.”
  – Craig Newmark
• “If you want to influence the conversation, you’ve actually got to get into the conversation. Respectfully. Meaningfully. Just because that’s a social media cliché doesn’t mean you get to ignore it and hope it goes away.”
  – Sonia Simone
• “In the beginning all business, was social. If someone sold you a bad chicken, you would badmouth the business and others would shun it until the merchant cleaned up his act.”
  – Francois Gossieaux
• “The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful”
  – Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard law professor and Internet expert (Source – Source2)
• The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
  – Bill Gates
• They say a year in the Internet business is like a dog year.. equivalent to seven years in a regular person’s life. In other words, it’s evolving fast and faster.
  – Vint Cerf
• The Internet has been the most fundamental change during my lifetime and for hundreds of years. Someone the other day said, “It’s the biggest thing since Gutenberg,” and then someone else said “No, it’s the biggest thing since the invention of writing.”
  – Rupert Murdoch
• We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people.
  – Pierre Omidyar (eBay)
• It’s a mistake to predict the size of markets that are so new. This model has shown no signs of slowing down
  – Eric Schmidt (Google)
• The problem is when a brand thinks social media is Facebook.
  – Marc Schiller
• “The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.”
  – Jason Falls

Here is a great comic from Geek&Poke : The History of Communication

Credits: Geek & Poke