“Current tendencies in many countries towards teaching to standardized exams puts us at risk of sliding toward the educational equivalent of fast food, instead of toward education providing the critical thinking society demands.”
–Dr. Michael Gould, Esri
“It’s true that, as scientists, our basic job is to describe the world as it is. But I don’t think that that’s the only thing that matters. In fact, I think the reason why we’re here, the reason why we think this is such an exciting topic, is not that we think that the new moral psychology is going to cure cancer. Rather, we think that understanding this aspect of human nature is going to perhaps change the way we think and change the way we respond to important problems and issues in the real world. If all we were going to do is just describe how people think and never do anything with it, never use our knowledge to change the way we relate to our problems, then I don’t think there would be much of a payoff. I think that applying our scientific knowledge to real problems is the payoff.”
–Joshua D. Greene
“All models are wrong but some are useful.”
–George E.P. Box [source]
“It is not enough just to assess an installation’s impact on the environment; one must also assess the impact of a changing environment on the installation. “
– Cleo Paskal, Columnist and Adjunct Professor, Global Change, SCMS, Kochi, India [source]
“A stone is simple. But you can build cathedrals of stones.”
–George Whitesides @TED
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
–Steve Jobs
“The idea that we should not allow science to do its job because we’re afraid is really deadening.”
–Michael Specter
“Science has long informed the environmental movement. Now it must take the lead, because we are forced to enter an era of large-scale ecosystem engineering, and we have to know what the hell we’re doing.”
–Stewart Brand
“Urban planning is dead in the U.S.”
“If you’re going to change the world, you might as well do it at the world scale.”
– Carl Steinitz
“The debate over climate change has been long, heated and often troubled by different viewpoints. Geospatial technologies and tools cut through the thick fog of alternating views and bring real data and results to the forefront.”
“There is no such thing as information overload, only bad design.”
“We’re going to have a whole generation of people who (won’t) know how to use a map. … I was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge and my GPS said, ‘Take a right turn.’ (I’m thinking:) ‘Why? Have you seen my movies lately?’ “
–Robin Williams
“Kennedy chose to go to the moon. Our generation must choose to remain on planet Earth.”
–Maldives President Mohammad Nasheed
“Geography is Destiny in Medicine.”
–Jack Lord, MD
“The map is not the territory.”
“The analysis is only as good as the model.”
–David Buckley
“Python is becoming the scientific language for GIS.”
–Bill Moreland
“Uncertainty is no longer an excuse not to do things.”
–Paul Warner
“GIS is the nervous system for the planet.”
–Jack Dangermond
“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”
—Stewart Brand
“In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
–Carl Sagan
“…the idea of trying to build machines that suck CO2 out of the air and then somehow store it is pretty clearly worth researching. That said, trees already do this quite well and our tree-planting technology is fine. Rather than wait around for the hypothetical ‘artificial trees’ of the future why not just plant more trees?”
“You can’t buy SDI [Spatial Data Infrastructure]. You have to build it.”
–Jack Dangermond
“Life is one big puzzle for me in the positive sense. There are a lot of things to play with. And they pay me for it.”
–Leonard Kleinrock
“Using geography to better design our world transcends fields, specialties, countries, and cultures.”
–Jack Dangermond
“It’s always been the goal and desire of we technologists that as we provide capability that computers are good at — number crunching, file storage, massive databases that can be searched — that it would free us up to do the things that humans do so well, like pattern recognition and putting thoughts together, intuition and innovation.”
–Leonard Kleinrock
“Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.”
–Vera Rubin
“What the world has now are new cities with young populations and old cities with old populations. How the dialogue between them plays out will determine much of the nature of the next half-century.”
–Stewart Brand
“The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
–Carl Sagan
“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”
–Stewart Brand
“Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenges of the new generations?”
–Neil Armstrong, 1969
“The nations of the world, seeking a basis for their own futures, continually pass judgment on our ability as a nation to make decisions, to concentrate effort, to manage vast and complex technological programs in our own interest. It is not too much to say that in many ways the viability of representative government and of the free enterprise system in a period of revolutionary changes based on science and technology is being tested in space . . . [Society has] reached a point where its progress and even its survival increasingly depend on our ability to organize the complex and do the unusual. We cannot do these things except through large aggregations of resources and power. [It is] revolution from above.”
–James Webb, former NASA Administrator, 16 November 1963
“You have noticed how, quite suddenly, everybody has become seriously concerned to protect the natural environment. It happened almost overnight, and one can understand how one can ask the question, ‘Where did this idea come from?’ You could say, of course, from biologists, from conservationists, from ecologists, but after all, they’ve really been saying these things for many years past, and previously they’ve never even got on base. Something new has happened to create a worldwide awareness of our planet as a unique and precious place. It seems to me more than a coincidence that this awareness should have happened at exactly the moment man took his first step into space.”
–Fred Hoyle, Astrophysicist, after Apollo 11
“People today are very nervous about what is happening on Wall Street and what I am more concerned about is ecological sustainability and global warming issues on the planet, because they are not something that you can go to the bank and borrow more money from. The real sustainability issue and the real economic foundation is nature’s capital, it is not artificial money capital.”
–Jack Dangermond, 2008
“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”
–Mark Weiser, 1991
“Design may have its greatest impact when it’s taken out of the hands of designers and put in to the hands of everyone.”
–Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
“I now see scientific accomplishments as a path, not an end; a path leading to and disappearing in mystery.”
–Charles Lindbergh, 1969
“What nature does in the course of long periods we do every day when we suddenly change the environment in which some species of living plant is situated.”
— Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1809
“The early days of GIS were very lonely. No-one knew what it meant.”
–Roger Tomlinson
“If I were entering adulthood now instead of in the environment of fifty years ago, I would choose a career that kept me in touch with nature more than science. … Too few natural areas remain; both by intent and by indifference we have insulated ourselves from the wilderness that produced us.”
— Charles Lindbergh, 1967
“The atmosphere on edge presents a striking sight. You see many distinct layers, all a different shade of iridescent blue. Through binoculars, I have counted six. The most amazing aspect of this view is how thin this life-preserving blanket is when compared to the full extent of the planet. Like an orbital eggshell, our atmosphere looks so frail that it might crack and be gone in an instant, rendering earth as barren and lifeless as any other baked hunk of rock orbiting the sun.”
–Don Pettit, Science Officer, International Space Station, 2002-2003
“Perhaps going to the Moon and back in itself isn’t all that important. But it is a big enough step to give people a new dimension in their thinking–a sort of enlightenment. After all, the Earth itself is a spacecraft. It’s an odd kind of spacecraft, since it carries its crew on the outside instead of inside. But it’s pretty small. . . . From our position on the Earth it is difficult to observe where the Earth is and where it’s going, or what its future course might be. Hopefully, by getting a little farther away, both in the real sense and the figurative sense, we’ll be able to make some people step back and reconsider their mission in the Universe, to think of themselves as a group of people who constitute the crew of a spaceship going through the Universe. If you’re going to run a spaceship, you’ve got to be pretty cautious about how you use your resources, how you use your crew, and how you treat your spacecraft.”
–Neil Armstrong
“Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. That is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature.”
— Jacob Bronowski, 1961
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government . . . The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present–and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
–U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address to the Nation, 17 January 1961
“My fascination with technology started when I was ten years old. I didn’t have a radio in my room, so I thought I’d rig one. I cut off the plug from a lamp, stripped the wires and connected them to the 12V wires of a loose car radio I found in our garage. I plugged it into the wall socket and watched it literally light on fire on the lovely green shag carpet in my basement room (god bless the 70s)! I frantically reached to unplug it and my hand touched both sides of the exposed wires sending lovely electricity rushing through my lean little body. Luckily, I fell over and the connection was broken. After I stamped on the radio to put out the fire and then carefully unplugged it, I started grinning from ear to ear! That was awesome! I had no idea why it had done what it did, but I had successfully burned up my first electronic device and given my hair a little more snap! I was hooked. I wanted to find out how it worked and why it ignited! My older brother Dan, who happened to own the car radio, didn’t think it was so cool. My dad on the other hand was rather happy that I stopped the house from burning down.”
–Dean Nelson, eBay
“Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine — too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.”
–Stewart Brand, creator of The Whole Earth Catalog
“Statistics prove that you can prove anything with statistics.”
–Evan Esar
“Google is giving you more intelligence than anyone in the history of the world. But, you’re idiot savants because you don’t know how to apply the information in an ethical and moral way.”
–Brad Allenby, Arizona State University
“GIS is hot right now. If you have GIS (experience) you will be hired.”
–Mike Sfraga, director of the University of Alaska Geography Program
“If you want a database that has everything, you’ve got it. It’s out there. It’s called reality.”
–Scott Morehouse, Director of Software Development, ESRI
“A lot of geographers believe science is a disease to be eradicated.”
–Prof. Roger Downs, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University
“…analysis does not have to involve complex mathematical operations, but begins in the human mind as soon as the map is in view, because the eye and brain are enormously efficient at detecting patterns and finding anomalies in maps and other visual displays. GIS works best when the computer and the brain combine forces, and when GIS is used to augment human intuition by manipulating and displaying data in ways that reveal things that would otherwise be invisible.”
–Dr. Michael F. Goodchild
“We have a big project in the Center for Collective Intelligence on global climate change. We call it the Climate Collaboratorium. The starting premise is that many people would say that global climate change is one of, if not the most, important societal problem we face. And if ever there was a problem that needed the most collective intelligence we can muster, this would be one of them.
“So what can we do? How can we harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people all over the world and whatever computational resources they can take advantage of to help us humans figure this out?”
–Thomas Malone, Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management
“…consumer mapping … technologies have … provided geo-awareness to everybody. And they’ve done it principally by building a standardized basemap for the planet.”
–Jack Dangermond, ESRI President
“Truly surprising: Some in the business world are still skeptical of the science [of climate change]. From a practical business perspective, however, whether you believe is no longer relevant — your regulator does believe CO2 is dangerous. That means she is now required by the law to regulate CO2 emissions.”
– Truman Semans and Rebecca Lutzy, Endangerment and Dangerous Regulation, ClimateBiz.com
“Maps are like campfires – everyone gathers around them, because they allow people to understand complex issues at a glance, and find agreement about how to help the land.”
–Sonoma Ecology Center, GIS/IS Program Web Site
Modern Science … has attempted by measuring and rechecking to admit as little warp as possible, but still some warp must be there. And in many fields young, inquisitive men [and women] are seeing new worlds. And from their seeing will emerge not only new patterns but new ethics, disciplines, and manners. The upheaval of the present world may stimulate restive minds to new speculations and evaluations. The new eyes will see, will break off new facets of reality.
–John Steinbeck in his foreword to Pacific Tides, 1939
“The end of geography at Harvard was typical of what happened to the field: university officials shut down its geography department in 1948, as CUNY geographer Neil Smith tells it, after being flummoxed by their ‘inability to extract a clear definition of the subject, to grasp the substance of geography, or to determine its boundaries with other disciplines.’ The academic brass ‘saw the field as hopelessly amorphous.’ But this ‘hopeless amorphousness’ is, in fact, the discipline’s greatest strength.”
–Trevor Paglen, artist, writer, and experimental geographer
Senator Barack Obama’s science and technology (S&T) platform, which concentrated on improving U.S. competitiveness, included doubling federal funding for basic research, and creation of a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to make sure that the U.S. government has the most updated infrastructure and technology services available.
In a September 2008 document , the Obama/Biden ticket committed to appointing “a highly qualified Assistant to the President for Science and Technology who will report directly to him and serve as Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.”
“(Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu’s) appointment (as Energy Secretary) should send a signal to all that my administration will value science,” President-elect Obama said at a Chicago press conference 15 December 2008. “We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action.”
“From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.
“Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. [...]
“I am confident that if we recommit ourselves to discovery; if we support science education to create the next generation of scientists and engineers right here in America; if we have the vision to believe and invest in things unseen, then we can lead the world into a new future of peace and prosperity.”
– President-elect Obama, December 2008
“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.”
– President Obama’s inaugural speech, 20 January 2009
“People don’t need to know geography, they need to do geography.”
– Daniel C. Edelson, Vice President for Education, National Geographic Society
“[P]erhaps Web 2.0 is a giant experiment that will ultimately validate the oft disputed irreplaceability of professionals–journalists, photographers, and yes, GIS professionals.”
