Quotes about Automation

The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.

It's hard to predict what life will be like in a hundred years. There are only a few things we can say with certainty. We know that everyone will drive flying cars, that zoning laws will be relaxed to allow buildings hundreds of stories tall, that it will be dark most of the time, and that women will all be trained in the martial arts. Here I want to zoom in on one detail of this picture. What kind of programming language will they use to write the software controlling those flying cars?

One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

Man is the only 150 pound nonlinear servomechanism that can be wholly reproduced by unskilled labor.

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man's back and place it on the broad back of the machine.

progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in the leisure hours available to the average worker.

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work.

We're going to be able to ask our computers to monitor things for us, and when certain conditions happen, are triggered, the computers will take certain actions and inform us after the fact.

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.

Technocracy wants to do everything by machinery. Machinery is doing just fine. If it can't kill you, it will put you out of work.

I'm always trying to think of ways to make something more efficient. If I have to do something once, that's fine. If I have to do it twice, I'm kind of annoyed. And if I have to do it three times, I'm going to try to automate it.