Just as one year in a dog's life is equivalent to seven years in a human life, one year in the high-technology business is like seven years in any other industry.
We can't achieve excellence through talent alone. Or merely by making technological improvements. We can't even buy our way to excellence, no matter how much money we have available to spend. More dollars will never do it. We have to develop a strong corporate conscience. Ethical muscle. And that doesn't happen by accident either.
If we were to go back in time 100 years and ask a farmer what he'd like if he could have anything, he'd probably say he wanted a horse that was twice as strong and ate half as many oats. He would not say he wanted a tractor. The point is, technology changes things so fast that many people aren't sure what the best solutions to their problems might be.
The marvels of modern technology include the development of a soda can which, when discarded, will last forever, and a $17,000 car which, when properly cared for, will rust out in two or three years.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
Too often technology is perceived as the problem rather than the solution; as something to be avoided rather than embraced. This is about as logical as my daughter's observing, while our family was driving through an unfamiliar city, "Trying to read a map while driving causes all the traffic lights to turn green."
Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom.
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