Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on ‘The Most Profoundly Important Sociological Factor of Modern Times’)

“The most profoundly important sociological factor of modern times [is] the growth of technology and the technicization of every aspect of human life.” — English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), The Human Situation: Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959 (1977)

Joke of the Day (Emo Phillips, on Him and Technology)

“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.”—American stand-up comic and actor Emo Phillips in “Quotes on Technology,” Reader’s Digest, June 2009

Maybe true back in 2009. But if the edge lords of today’s tech world have anything to say in the matter (and they will, they will), you can bet that they’ll be crowing about the athletic ability of their latest AI-driven projects before long—even promoting a Computer Olympics.

(The image accompanying this post, of Emo Phillips opening for Weird Al Yankovic at the Apollo Theater, was taken on Mar. 22, 2018, by slgckgc.)

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, on Technology and ‘The Problems That Really Matter’)

“If the future is anything like the past, technology will continue to solve problems that are not all that pressing, while doing nothing to address the problems that really matter. Thus, while a 2-year-old may never know what Roku boxes are, he will know what massive traffic jams are. To date, technology has done nothing to improve the flow of traffic on I-95, I-25 or the 405, much less the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Desktop PCs may go the way of tape recorders and pocket calculators, but the Beltway will still be backed up halfway to Baltimore.”— Humor columnist Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets: There Are Some Things Technology Won’t Change,” The Wall Street Journal, May 25-26, 2019

Well, for a while, during the pandemic, it looked like traffic jams were easing, including in the DC-Baltimore area that Queenan talks about—and I suppose that tech-enabled remote work facilitated that.

But, according to this report from a year ago by an NBC affiliate, more people were on the road in that area than before the pandemic, with return-to-office edicts rising. It just goes to show: technology can’t really dislodge institutions and individuals from their stuck-on-stupid mode—even if stuck-on-stupid means being caught in massive traffic jams. 

Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on the Bad and Good Sides of Technology)

“It is only recently, however, that we have, as a nation, begun to see that man’s mind is no more made for technology than is his body, and that, conversely, technology is valuable only in so far as it helps men to cultivate sanity and goodness as well as bodily health. Moreover, we now begin to suspect that many technological advances regarded as wholly beneficial may have their bad as well as good side. For example, technicians have made possible the multiplication of many kinds of novel amusements and distractions, from the modern newspaper to television. People enjoy these distractions. But that does not mean that they are, humanly speaking, altogether good. People also enjoy hashish and opium, when these are made available. It seems possible that we are paying a heavy spiritual price for our new-found amusements.” — English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), “If We Survive,” March 16, 1936, in Between the Wars: Essays and Letters, edited by David Bradshaw (1994)

One can only imagine what Huxley’s comments would be today about modern civilization’s increasing reliance on the automobile, social media, robots and AI.

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Zittrain, on Problems With AI Being ‘Excited and Very Agreeable’)

“They have been tuned to be really nice and really excited and very agreeable, which means they will agree with almost anything. … This way of being, it has no recollection — it’s stateless. … It is trusting the user to be honest about what happened, and then it goes up to something it didn’t do, and provides an explanation for the thing it didn’t do with all of the gravity that it can for a fable, and this is pervasive.” — American professor of Internet law Jonathan Zittrain quoted by Liz DeLillo, “Jonathan Zittrain Discusses Governance, Eccentricities of AI,” The Chautauquan Daily, Aug. 21, 2025

I thought of Zittrain’s warning (which I heard while on vacation at the Chautauqua Institution last month) when I came across a New York Times article from early August about how chatbots can go into a delusional spiral.

A “sycophantic improv machine” led, Kashmir Hill and Dylan Freedman reported, a Canadian corporate recruiter with no history of mental illness to believe for a while that he had “discovered a novel mathematical formula, one that could take down the internet and power inventions like a force-field vest and a levitation beam.” This is exactly the kind of “really nice and really excited and very agreeable” mechanism that Zittrain spoke about.

Who knows what will happen with people less skeptical and more open to illusions?

I have problems with "Real Time" host Bill Maher, but I nodded in agreement when last month he took to task those who love this new state of affairs:

"People don't read anymore, they ask their Chatbot the question and sometimes it's right and sometimes it isn't. But what it always is, is a f--king a-- kisser. You literally can not ask it a question so stupid it won't respond 'great question.' 'Can I drink milk if it's lumpy? Great question!'"

(The image of Jonathan Zittrain accompanying this post was taken at Cambridge on Dec. 1, 2018, by Joi Ito and posted on Flickr.)

Quote of the Day (Stefan Zweig, on ‘The Greatest Curse Brought Down on Us by Technology’)

“The greatest curse brought down on us by technology is that it prevents us from escaping the present even for a brief time. Previous generations could retreat into solitude and seclusion when disaster struck; it was our fate to be aware of everything catastrophic happening anywhere in the world at the hour and the second when it happened.”— Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), The World of Yesterday (1942)

At least one more curse might have been bestowed on humanity since Zweig’s observation: We are not only made aware instantly of a catastrophe, but our understanding of the event is likely to be misinformed through lack of historical perspective, disinformation, or both.

Quote of the Day (David Pogue, on Size and ‘The First Rule of Technology’)

“At this point, the first rule of technology should be clear to everyone: as progress marches forward, gadgets get smaller….But… there’s a fly in the truism: some things can’t get smaller forever. You can’t make a microwave oven smaller than the food you put inside. You can’t design a Blu-ray player that’s smaller than the disc it’s supposed to play. And you can’t make a scanner that’s smaller than the pages or photos you want to scan.” —American technology and science writer and TV presenter David Pogue, “Scanning On the Go, Wirelessly,” The New York Times, February 2, 2012

The photo accompanying this post, of David Pogue speaking at The UP Experience 2010, was taken Oct. 21, 2010, by Ed Schipul. 

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, on a Technology Nightmare)

“Here’s another nightmare scenario: the ‘Internet of Things’ has all your music linked from a server in the basement to a single upstairs remote control that connects to the home-entertainment unit. Suddenly your audio system won't play anything but Il Divo. U2 is gone. Sinatra is gone. Brad Paisley is gone—and he took Miranda Lambert with him! Even the original-cast soundtrack from ‘Mamma Mia’ is gone. It's Il Divo, Il Divo, Il Divo, 24 hours a day. And you don't even own any Il Divo recordings.” — Humor columnist Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets: When the ‘Internet of Things’ Attacks,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 30-Sept. 1, 2014

Quote of the Day (John Gapper, on a Crucial Event in ‘Carbon Lock-In’)

“There was a period in the early 20th century when electric (or steam) batteries nearly emerged as the dominant form of propulsion for cars, before the gasoline-powered combustion engine triumphed.

“We are still trying to overcome the destructive environmental impact of this historic event, although improvements in battery technology, regulatory initiatives and changes in consumer preferences are progressing. It’s a great example of what’s known as carbon lock-in – the entrenchment of carbon-emitting industries and technologies in everyday life.”— Business columnist John Gapper, “Debit Cards, Electric Cars and Ghosts of the Technological Past,” The Financial Times, Jan 22-23, 2022

The image accompanying this post, of John Gapper, was taken Oct. 15, 2010, by The Financial Times.

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, on Music and Disharmony With Alexa)

“Basically, I don’t think that Alexa likes me. This may be because of a tiff we had a few months ago when I told Alexa to never, ever play smooth jazz in my presence. Never. The problem…is that it’s hard for an electronic assistant to determine what constitutes smooth jazz when you issue a generic command: ‘Alexa, play jazz.’ Alexa doesn’t know that traditional jazz—Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong—is divine, while smooth jazz—a surprisingly tenacious, satanic leftover from the 1990s—is what you listen to when you are on hold for a dental appointment.

“And in these cases, I suspect that I may have taken on an abusive tone, questioning Alexa’s intelligence and sophistication. And yes, perhaps even swearing at her. Which was just not right. Even though Alexa was clearly in the wrong.”—Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets: If Alexa Won’t Talk To Me, What Hope Is There?,” The Wall Street Journal, Mar. 6-7, 2021

Oh, those electronic assistants! Even when they speak in voices users like (a relative of mine has programmed his to sound like an Australian female—an awful lot like Naomi Watts, maybe even Nicole Kidman), they still may leave something to be desired, as Queenan has discovered.

I know just how he feels. Recently, I commanded, “Hey Google, play Dinah Washington.” I should have known I wasn’t going to get quite what I expected when my “Google” (who sounds like a female consultant conducting human resource seminars for employees) announced that the selections would come from Spotify stations that play Dinah Washington. 

Sure enough, I was shortly hearing Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and other jazz luminaries.

Granted, it wasn’t the kind of assault on taste that raised Queenan’s hackles. But it leaves me thinking that technology still has a way to go before it replaces some essential human functions.

Quote of the Day (Jacques Barzun, on Morale-Sapping Gadgets)

“Many of us affect a tone of irony about gadgets, as if we lived always in realms above and dealt with trifles only during rare descents from sublime thoughts. The truth is that more and more of the important things in life turn on pinpoints. Our frustrations begin in trivialities — a telephone out of order, a car that will not start, a claim check whose number has been misread. The thing in cellophane that cannot be got at — plain to the sight but sealed like an egg — is the modern version of the torture of Tantalus. Catastrophes we will deal with like heroes, but the bottle top that defies us saps our morale, like the tiny arrows of the Lilliputians that maddened Gulliver and set his strength at naught.”— Columbia Univ. teacher, historian, educator, cultural critic and administrator Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), God’s Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced With a Few Harsh Words (1954)

Quote of the Day (Bruce Schneier, on How ‘Everything is Turning Into a Computer’)

“Just like that, everything is turning into a computer….Your phone is a computer that makes calls. Your car is a computer with wheels and an engine. Your oven is a computer that bakes lasagnas. Your camera is a computer that takes pictures. Even our pets and livestock are now regularly chipped; my cat is practically a computer that sleeps in the sun all day.”— American cryptographer, computer security professional, and privacy specialist Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and ControlYour World (2015)

What’s your cat’s name, Bruce? HAL?

Quote of the Day (Douglas Adams, on Things That Go Wrong)

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”— English author, screenwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist and dramatist Douglas Adams (1952-2001), Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Book 5) (1992)

(This portrait of Douglas Adams was taken by Michael Hughes.)

Tweet of the Day (‘Wendy S.,’ on Her Little Girl’s School Assignment)

 “My six year old's school assignment was to draw a challenge she thought she could overcome. So she drew herself teaching me how to use the TV remote.”—“Midwest Minivan Mom” Wendy S. (@maughammon) on Twitter, quoted in “Life in These United States,” Reader’s Digest, September 2017

I can relate!

Quote of the Day (Calvin Trillin, on Why ‘All Thumbs’ Is Losing Meaning)

“I noticed the teenager, who was sitting across from me, texting with blinding speed. As his thumbs danced over the tiny screen, I realized that ‘all thumbs’ cannot much longer mean clumsy with one's hands. And I realized how much I’m going to miss it. It has always seemed to me a way of noting a deficit without being vicious about it — a description of the bumbling sitcom dad who tries to fiddle with a circuit breaker and plunges the entire house into darkness. But how can that man be labeled all thumbs if the teenager sitting across from me can use his thumbs on his smartphone fast enough to take dictation from a cattle auctioneer?”— Calvin Trillin, “Essay: Unplanned Obsolescence,” The New York Times Book Review, Dec. 31, 2017

(Photo of Calvin Trillin taken at a discussion at Dartmouth College, February 2011.)

Quote of the Day (Hannah Kuchler, on ‘Internal Propaganda’ Among Tech Companies)

“Internal propaganda is one way to create true believers out of workers. Missions are repeated like chants, offices wallpapered in slogans, and branded T-shirts bring corporate identity to the bar. Programmes that make praising peers almost obligatory complete the circle. Employees see their CEO not as the person who pays their wages but as the living embodiment of their values. Now, these leaders have a challenge that can't be solved by high fives and zings: how to live up to employees' expectations in darker times.”— Hannah Kuchler, “Virtual High-Fives,” Financial Times, May 20-21, 2017