Daniel H. Wilson – 23 Quotes

23 Quotes by Daniel H. Wilson

I was writing a scene where a guy was choking another guy to death. You can go online and type ‘chokeholds’ and watch scenes where martial artists choke each other out. You can hear what noises they make when they go unconscious, see how their bodies flop and everything. YouTube is amazing for the more detailed stuff.

– Daniel H. Wilson

In my books the technology that I choose to talk about has to serve the themes. What that means is that I end up having to cut out a lot of cool technology that would be really fun to describe and play with, but which would just confuse everybody. So in ‘Amped,’ I focus on neural implants.

– Daniel H. Wilson

Over the past 50 years we got versions of X-ray specs and space vacations, and even death rays. But the X-ray specs don’t fit on your face – they’re big things that screen your luggage for guns. Space vacations are real, but they cost $20 million. We have death rays, but you have to be a triple Ph.D. to play with them.

– Daniel H. Wilson

The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius, an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics, called Cheetah blades, Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world.

– Daniel H. Wilson

Change creates fear, and technology creates change. Sadly, most people don’t behave very well when they are afraid.

– Daniel H. Wilson

The fear of the never-ending onslaught of gizmos and gadgets is nothing new. The radio, the telephone, Facebook – each of these inventions changed the world. Each of them scared the heck out of an older generation. And each of them was invented by people who were in their 20s.

– Daniel H. Wilson

In the future, when Microsoft leaves a security-flaw in their code it won’t mean that somebody hacks your computer. It will mean that somebody takes control of your servant robot and it stands in your bedroom doorway sharpening a knife and watching you sleep.

– Daniel H. Wilson

Looking ahead, future generations may learn their social skills from robots in the first place. The cute yellow Keepon robot from Carnegie Mellon University has shown the ability to facilitate social interactions with autistic children. Morphy at the University of Washington happily teaches gestures to children by demonstration.

– Daniel H. Wilson

‘Robopocalypse’ explores the intertwined fates of regular people who face a future filled with murderous machines. It follows them as humanity foments the robot uprising, fails to recognize the coming storm, and then is rocked to the core by methodical, crippling attacks.

– Daniel H. Wilson

You probably found ‘How to Survive a Robot Uprising’ in the humor section. Let’s just hope that is where it belongs.

– Daniel H. Wilson

Sometimes a technology is so awe-inspiring that the imagination runs away with it – often far, far away from reality. Robots are like that. A lot of big and ultimately unfulfilled promises were made in robotics early on, based on preliminary successes.

– Daniel H. Wilson

I absolutely don’t think a sentient artificial intelligence is going to wage war against the human species.

– Daniel H. Wilson

In movies and in television the robots are always evil. I guess I am not into the whole brooding cyberpunk dystopia thing.

– Daniel H. Wilson

As a society, I think we express our cultural mores through our politics. We’re trying constantly to figure out what’s OK and what’s not OK. And it’s hard, because our society is constantly buffeted by gale force winds of technology. Things are always changing.

– Daniel H. Wilson

Right now, we have the most complex relationship with technology that we’ve ever had. Your regular person has more technology in their life now than the whole world had 100 years ago.

– Daniel H. Wilson

We humans have a love-hate relationship with our technology. We love each new advance and we hate how fast our world is changing… The robots really embody that love-hate relationship we have with technology.

– Daniel H. Wilson

As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I’d be writing novels.

– Daniel H. Wilson

I absolutely believe that a lot of the issues raised in ‘Amped’ about technology migrating into our bodies are issues that we’re really going to deal with soon.

– Daniel H. Wilson

Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study – you can get a degree in robotics – and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people’s minds.

– Daniel H. Wilson

The dissemination of advanced implantable technology will likely be just as ruthlessly democratic as the ailments it is destined to treat. Meaning that, someday soon, we may have a new class of very smart, very fast people – yesterday’s disabled and elderly.

– Daniel H. Wilson

The goal for many amputees is no longer to reach a ‘natural’ level of ability but to exceed it, using whatever cutting-edge technology is available. As this new generation sees it, our tools are evolving faster than the human body, so why obey the limits of mere nature?

– Daniel H. Wilson

These days the technology can solve our problems and then some. Solutions may not only erase physical or mental deficits but leave patients better off than “able-bodied” folks. The person who has a disability today may have a superability tomorrow.

– Daniel H. Wilson

We’ve been co-evolving with our technology for a hundred thousand years. Human beings and the technology we make were always inseparable. We’re finally coming into this moment where it’s coming inside our body for the first time in history.

– Daniel H. Wilson