Change is not merely necessary to life – it is life.
Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.
It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution.
Much education springs from some image of the future. If the image of the future held by a society is grossly inaccurate, its education system will betray its youth.
The Law of Raspberry Jam: the wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets.
It is always easier to talk about change than to make it.
Knowledge is promiscuous. It mates and gives birth to more knowledge.
The control of knowledge is the crux of tomorrow’s worldwide struggle for power in every human institution.
The customer will become so integrated into the production process that we will find it more and more difficult to tell just who is actually the consumer and the producer.
Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.
The biggest tragedy I had was the loss of my daughter from neuromuscular disease in 2000, at age 46.
Science fiction is the sovereign prophylactic against future shock.
Many countries today have begun the transition from an industrial wealth system and civilization to a knowledge-based system – without appreciating that a new wealth system is impossible without a corresponding new way of life.
Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.
Humanity faces a quantum leap forward. It faces the deepest social upheaval and creative restructuring of all time. Without clearly recognizing it, we are engaged in building a remarkable new civilization from the ground up. This is the meaning of the Third Wave.
The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together.
You cannot get a new economy without a new society.
One of the most highly developed skills in contemporary Western civilization is dissection: the split -up of problems into their smallest possible components. We are good at it. So good, we often forget to put the pieces back together again.
By challenging anthropocentricism and temporal provincialism, science fiction throws open the whole of civilization and its premises to constructive criticism.
It would be a mistake to assume that the present day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. But much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it ever more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals.