Quote

We tend to use a new technology to do an old task more efficiently. We pave the cow paths.

Paul Saffo

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Saffo
Age: 54
Essayist
Professor
Paul L. Saffo
Tend
Technology
Pave
Path
Efficiently
Use
Paths
Cows
Entrepreneur
Task
Tasks

More quotes by Paul Saffo

Image
Using technology merely to lower operational costs amounts to standing on a whale fishing for minnows. It just allows you to do the old thing more efficiently, where in this moment of deep transformation, it is much more likely that you should be doing something entirely new in an entirely different way.
Paul Saffo
Image
You don't want to rely on an expert to tell you what lies ahead.
Paul Saffo
Image
Digital technology is the solvent leaching the glue out of all of our traditional institutions.
Paul Saffo
Image
It's interesting to see the lament of each generation overwhelmed by the next new tool. I can show you passages from scholars of Germany in the 1480s lamenting the fact that they are overloaded with all this stuff to read because of the printing press.
Paul Saffo
Image
I worry about a society that can remember everything.
Paul Saffo
Image
Every day huge amounts of information break off like icebergs and melt away. What worries me is that much information in electronic form is never reduced to paper. Some people have described this as being on the edge of a digital Dark Age and fear we may commit a massive act of amnesia.
Paul Saffo
Image
My advice is don't use technology primarily to lower costs. Use technology to create new, effective ways of touching the market and creating new businesses and if you do that right, the cost savings will come.
Paul Saffo
Image
Google was the right set of people at the right time, and they ended up doing the right set of things. It's worth looking at how they are managed. They are network-oriented and allow a lot of flexibility and creativity.
Paul Saffo
Image
Never mistake a clearer view for a short distance just because the technology looks like it's about to arrive in the very near future. Chances are there will be some surprises and in the long run even the most expected of futures tends to arrive late and in completely unexpected ways.
Paul Saffo
Image
I think it is just a matter of time before we have literal ghosts in the machine so you can create an alter ego of yourself that learns from your social experiences and extends a life even if you're no longer in the game or you are no longer alive.
Paul Saffo
Image
Though I carry enough electronics to get nervous in a lightning storm, I love paper and I always have a Moleskine journal with me to capture notes, conversations and ideas.
Paul Saffo
Image
I can't imagine how you can find the discipline to be emotionally detached reporting on a revolution, the winds of which are blowing right down the hallways of the publication you work for. That's like an orthopedic surgeon trying to perform arthroscopic surgery on their own knee. It's possible, but it's hard to see through all the pain.
Paul Saffo
Image
More information and more communications foster world peace and understanding. But connecting extremist nut cases together on the Web - whatever flavor extremism they are - is a really bad thing. More information may not be a good thing, either.
Paul Saffo
Image
It will take a decade or two, but fundamentalism is going to burn itself.
Paul Saffo
Image
The Web is a compelling new medium being put to all kinds of uses, by everyone from banks to Cub Scouts to flying saucer cults. That said, it can also be a powerful folly amplifier.
Paul Saffo
Image
Sometimes I think we're on this world for three reasons: to be useful, to tell each other stories and to collect stuff. It's the only explanation for eBay. We love to collect stuff, and at least if we're collecting stuff in cyberspace we're not deforesting the Sierra Nevada.
Paul Saffo
Image
I've actually tried not to call myself a futurist for the last 25 years. I prefer forecaster, but people call me a futurist, and it doesn't really bother me.
Paul Saffo
Image
Microsoft is a big intellectual roach motel. All the big minds go in, and they don't come out.
Paul Saffo
Image
This new world of personal media - the Web, the Internet and et cetera - not only delivers the world to your living rooms, but everywhere. And we get to answer back. And we're expected to answer back.
Paul Saffo
Image
Each time you toss out a 'singing' greeting card, you are disposing of more computing power than existed in the entire world before 1950.
Paul Saffo