For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.
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Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity read more
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.
Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
An idea is the only level which moves the world.
An idea is the only level which moves the world.
The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus read more
The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.
It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
