Nathan Myhrvold Quotes

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Nathan Myhrvold

Profession : Businessman

Birth : August 3, 1959

If we could create invention capitalism, that would be a helluva legacy, that would be a helluva thing to do... We could actually turbocharge the rate at which the world invents things.

Nathan Myhrvold

One of the greatest things that Apple and Jobs were very good at doing was daring to do the very different thing. It's what I did with my cookbook, frankly.

Nathan Myhrvold

Every serious nuclear accident involves operator error, so you want to eliminate the operator altogether.

Nathan Myhrvold

My career at Microsoft really was getting in the way of my cooking.

Nathan Myhrvold

One of the problems with posing a 'bold new plan' is that you can't just extrapolate from previous plans.

Nathan Myhrvold

There is a one-in-300 chance that Earth will be struck on March 16, 2880, by an asteroid large enough to destroy civilization and possibly cause the extinction of the human race. But, on the bright side, Prince could re-release his hit song with the new refrain 'We're gonna party like its twenty-eight seventy-nine.'

Nathan Myhrvold

Most estimates of the mortality risk posed by asteroid impacts put it at about the same risk as flying in a commercial airliner. However, you have to remember that this is like the entire human race riding the plane - it is one of the few risks that really could wipe us all out.

Nathan Myhrvold

Sooner or later the space program will need to save us by detecting and deflecting an incoming asteroid.

Nathan Myhrvold

Risk is the sort of word that is easy to discuss upfront but tough to handle when it comes time to pay the piper. There will always be some who wimp out and second-guess when the pain hits, but that is a childish reaction.

Nathan Myhrvold

Within NASA, the shuttle is perhaps the least-groundbreaking project. Recall that Apollo was about creating brand-new technologies that did something unprecedented - putting men on the moon. The shuttle is, by comparison, a relic designed to make going into orbit routine.

Nathan Myhrvold

We collectively have a special place in our heart for the manned space flight program - Apollo nostalgia is one element, but that is only part of it. American culture worships explorers - look at the fame of Lewis and Clark, for example. The American people want to think of themselves as supporting exploration.

Nathan Myhrvold

The techniques of being an Internet visionary are just like those of lower-tech fortunetellers through the ages. A technological visionary must tell people what they want to hear, because your company's stock won't rise if you spout an unpopular vision to analysts.

Nathan Myhrvold

It is better to predict dramatic things that don't happen than boring things that do.

Nathan Myhrvold

Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here.

Nathan Myhrvold

Suppose that 'Unsolved Mysteries' called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people - like the lost identical twin, only younger than you.

Nathan Myhrvold

A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.

Nathan Myhrvold

The magic words 'on the Internet,' if inserted into nearly any sentence, seem to protect it from normal critical scrutiny.

Nathan Myhrvold

We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months.

Nathan Myhrvold

Business is war! Its leaders are strategic commanders, who boldly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - and who perform other acts of derring-do. This kind of talk sounds great in the boardroom, and, for that matter, in the bookstore, where dozens of authors counsel would-be corporate warriors.

Nathan Myhrvold

Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.

Nathan Myhrvold