21st century Quote by Thomas Homer-Dixon

“Human beings have been smart enough to turn nature to their ends, generate vast wealth for themselves, and double their average life span. But are they smart enough to solve the problems of the 21st century?” quote by Thomas Homer-Dixon — Download Open image

“Human beings have been smart enough to turn nature to their ends, generate vast wealth for themselves, and double their average life span. But are they smart enough to solve the problems of the 21st century?”

Thomas Homer-Dixon

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More by Thomas Homer-Dixon

hen the price of carbon reaches $100 a tonne, then it will become an economically viable business proposition to start taking COâ‚‚ out of…

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“As ingenuity gaps widen the gulfs of wealth and power among us, we need imagination, metaphor and empathy more than ever, to help us remember each other’s essential humanity. I believe this will be the central challenge of the coming century—one that will shape everything else about who we are and what we become. Anatol Rapoport, a pioneering mathematical psychologist…

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Our marvelous new information technologies boost our power and opportunities for political engagement, but they can also disempower us by contributing to extreme political mobilization that sometimes overwhelms our institutions. These institutions were designed for rural societies operation at a tiny fraction of today's speed and with a citizenry vastly less capable that today's. It's unclear how they will change…

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“Conventional economics is the dominant intellectual rationalization of today’s world order. As we’ve overextended the growth phase of our global adaptive cycle, this rationalization has become relentlessly more complex and rigid and progressively less tenable. Breakdown will, all at once, discredit this rationalization and create intellectual space for new ideas to flourish. But this space will be brutally competitive. We…

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“As I looked over this curious document, I was particularly struck by a band of text across the bottom. It bore the title “Paperwork Reduction Act Notice” and read: The time needed to complete and file this form will vary depending on individual circumstances. The estimated average time is: The text then cheerfully concluded with a note that if I…

Thomas Homer-Dixon

“We can see how our world is, in many ways, becoming more complex, fast-paced, and unpredictable. As a result, the problems we face are getting more complicated as well, and (as in my thought experiment), we need longer and more elaborate sets of instructions for technologies and institutions that can effectively solve them. Or, to put it in terms of…

Thomas Homer-Dixon

“Today’s overwhelming volume and variety of information makes it possible—by selecting and connecting data points carefully—to paint practically any picture of the world and make it seem accurate. So the pictures we paint are often more a reflection of our deepest personal orientation, especially of our basic optimism or pessimism, than of empirical evidence.28 All the same, amidst the welter…

Thomas Homer-Dixon

“Writing and repairing software generally takes far more time and is far more expensive than initially anticipated. “Every feature that is added and every…

Thomas Homer-Dixon

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“The result is a dangerous lag between the natural sciences and the social sciences. The natural sciences and the technologies they spawn carry us…

Thomas Homer-Dixon

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“We might be excused our ignorance in this case, because ocean-atmosphere systems are, after all, almost inconceivably complex. Less easy to excuse is our…

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“To support an adequate standard of living, humankind still needs huge quantities of wood and wood products, from planking and beams and fibreboard to…

Thomas Homer-Dixon

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Bitumen is junk energy. A joule, or unit of energy, invested in extracting and processing bitumen returns only four to six joules in the…

Thomas Homer-Dixon

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Explore all 16 Thomas Homer-Dixon quotes

More 21st century quotes

The young people today are the 21st century.

Martin Scorsese

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“You know it’s the 21st Century when someone TEXTS you from the washroom to ask you to bring them a roll of toilet paper.”

Comic Strip Mama

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“I am made of a thousand ghosts. Only you can shoot me down.”

Bella James

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Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the…

Bill Gates

Undeniably, character does count for our citizens, out communities, and our Nation, and this week we celebrate the importance of character in our individual lives... core ethical values of trustworthiness, fairness, responsibility, caring, respect, and citizenship form the foundation of our democracy, our economy, and our society... Instilling sound character in our children is essential to maintaining the strength of…

William J. Clinton

The hope of Internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the Internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information,…

Peter Singer