Charles Baudelaire? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Technophiles have welcomed recent advances in artificial intelligence in the domain of art. Yet, many artists and connoisseurs have been unsettled or openly hostile. One commentator attempted to provide historical perspective by claiming that the famous French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire denounced the emerging technology of …
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Quote Origin: Nothing Is More Impotent Than an Unread Library
John Waters? Austin Kleon? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Building a library is an enjoyable lifelong pursuit. Intellectually engaged people are often bibliomaniacs. Yet, many acquired volumes are never read. This behavior has been condemned and praised in two radically different statements that differ by a single word: (1) Nothing is more impotent than an …
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Maxim Origin: The Medium Is the Message
Marshall McLuhan? Ashley Montagu? Edmund Carpenter? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan contemplated the influences of different types of media on human thought and behavior. He said that television was a cool medium because it was high in participation, whereas radio was a hot medium with low participation. He formulated the …
Quote Origin: The Only Way of Discovering the Limits of the Possible Is To Venture a Little Way Past Them Into the Impossible
Arthur C. Clarke? Tobias Dantzig? Robert Heinlein? Jerome Agel? Harold Faber? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The science fiction luminary Arthur C. Clarke once said something like: the best way to find the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. I have seen several different versions of this remark. Would …
Quote Origin: There Are Only Nine Meals Between Mankind and Anarchy
Alfred Henry Lewis? Larry Niven? Jerry Pournelle? Eric Sevareid? George Allan England? Donald Lowrie? John J. Fitzgerald? Hiram Motherwell? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: When the food supplies of a society are disrupted it takes only a few days before extreme behaviors emerge, e.g., chaos, mayhem, and rebellion. An adage states that: There are only …
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Quote Origin: Everything Is Connected To Everything Else
Barry Commoner? Gotthold Ephraim Lessing? Leonardo da Vinci? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.? John Muir? Jean Piaget? Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Solomon Short? David Gerrold? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The universe reflects a pervasive interconnectedness. Here are two versions of a pertinent adage: Everything is connected to everything else.Everything connects to everything else. Ecological thinkers have …
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Quote Origin: The First Ultraintelligent Machine Is the Last Invention That Humanity Need Ever Make
Irving John Good? Arthur C. Clarke? Philip J. Davis? Reuben Hersh? Vernor Vinge? Raymond Kurzweil? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: A prominent computer researcher in the 1950s or 1960s predicted that humanity would create a superintelligent machine sometime during the twentieth century. The researcher believed that this machine would be humanity’s last invention. Would you …
Quote Origin: Science Can Never Solve One Problem Without Raising Ten More Problems
George Bernard Shaw? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Scientific knowledge is incomplete and tentative. Superior scientific theories regularly supersede existing theories. The knowledge provided is flawed, but the process is self-correcting and self-improving. Irish playwright and activist George Bernard Shaw bluntly stated that science was always wrong. He believed that every time science solved a …
Quote Origin: The 3D Web Will Rapidly Be the Dominant Thing and Everyone Will Have an Avatar
Philip Rosedale? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The technology needed to implement virtual reality (VR) has been under development for decades. The company Linden Lab launched a popular virtual world called “Second Life” (SL) in 2003. The avatar of each user could move though a wide variety of 3D digital environments and interact with digital …
Quote Origin: In the Lingo, This Imaginary Place Is Known as the Metaverse
Mark Zuckerberg? Neal Stephenson? William Gibson? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company was changing its name to Meta (full name Meta Platforms). Zuckerberg spoke about an immersive internet called the metaverse. I think some science fiction (SF) author coined the term metaverse. Would you please explore this …
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