Robot Quotes

1/17/2012

I came across an unsettling trend while searching for some inspirational quotes to endorse robotics. While there are many quotes that are great and inspirational there are many anti-technology type quotes that really do not follow the ideals of mainstream robotics. What I found was that generally any list of robot related quotes that I came across had a generally negative attitude toward robots and technology all together. Here is some of what I what I came across on my search:

I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines.
- CLAUDE SHANNON, The Mathematical Theory of Communication

The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become “Golems,” they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.
- ERICH FROMM, The Sane Society

If you make [robots] perfectly realistic, you trigger this body-snatcher fear in some people.
- DAVID HANSON, CNN.com, Nov. 23, 2006

Machines smart enough to do anything for us will probably also be able to do anything with us: go to dinner, own property, compete for sexual partners. They might even have passionate opinions about politics or, like the robots on Battlestar Galactica, even religious beliefs. Some have worried about robot rebellions, but with so many tort lawyers around to apply the brakes, the bigger question is this: Will humanoid machines enrich our social lives, or will they be a new kind of television, destroying our relationships with real humans?
- FRED HAPGOOD, Discover Magazine, June 2008

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke

It is the oldest plot that robots take over human civilization but the truth is that this has already happened. Your car now computes fuel usage and some even parallel park on their own. The fact that we have used robots for almost every modern application is monumental. Robots can revolutionize the way we live. It is impossible to stop the progression of technological advancement, what is left now is for us to decide what we are going to do with it.

resources: http://www.notable-quotes.com/r/robots_quotes.html, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_technology.html,