What really makes it an invention is that someone decides not to change the solution to a known problem, but to change the question.
New ideas in technology are literally a dime-a-dozen, or cheaper than that.
Whatever the marketplace, if talented people are given resources, they’re going to keep driving us to having better, simpler, cheaper solutions to problems.
Sporting competitions seem to be what we obsess over, frankly. So if we can put engineering, science, technology into a format of healthy, fun competition, we can attract all sorts of kids that might not see the kind of activity we do as accessible or rewarding.
You have teenagers thinking they’re going to make millions as NBA stars when that’s not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is.
Segway will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.
My biggest failure is I have too many to talk about.
Some broad themes brought me where I am today. At a very young age, my hobby became thinking and finding connections.
My biggest worry is I’m running out of time and energy. Thirty years ago I thought 10 years was a really long time.
To me, innovations are the wheel, fire, language, movable type. There are not 3 million innovations; there are 3 million inventions.
In some cases, inventions prohibit innovation because we’re so caught up in playing with the technology, we forget about the fact that it was supposed to be important.
Nothing that has value, real value, has no cost. Not freedom, not food, not shelter, not healthcare.
We are in a race between knowledge and catastrophe. If we keep track of what is important, never lower our standards or forget why we are here, we have the ability to determine the fate of the world.
If you’re going to fail, you might as well fail at the big ones.
I’m a human entropy producer.
We cant live any more in a world which is based on stuff and not ideas. If you want to live with the world of stuff, were all doomed.
I don’t want to think about how many people have thought or still think that I’m crazy.
We live in a world where virtually everybody expects there’s going to be some reasonable therapy for virtually any situation.
Kids are intimidated by the way science and technology is presented. It’s made, frankly, quite boring and it becomes part of a curriculum that chases particularly women and minorities away.
I think we have a society which is spending more and more of its money on healthcare as a percent of GDP as a percent of a lot of things. I think that’s a measure of success.
I think in our lifetime, that level of acceptance of “well, we couldn’t do any better,” won’t be tolerated. We’re going to start to see individual therapies customized for individual patients, and it’s going to change the way people get healthcare.