Technology has revolutionised the way we live and interact with one another, and as such it has inspired people to describe it in a very clever or emotive way. While some believe that technology has decreased our humanity, others view it as a way to bring the world closer together. For good or for evil, here are some of the best quotes by people who have reflected on the impact technology has had on our lives.

"Technology is anything that wasn't around you when you were born." - Alan Kay (Computer Scientist)

"All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness". - Mark Kennedy (Author)

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic". - Arthur C. Clarke (Author)

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless". - Thomas Edison (Inventor)

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity". "The human spirit must prevail over technology." - Albert Einstein (Scientist)

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man". - Elbert Hubbard (Author)

"Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet". -Douglas Adams (Author)

"Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons". - R. Buckminster Fuller (Inventor and Author)

"I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex". - Kurt Vonnegut (Author)

"You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers". - Walter Lippmann (Author)

"The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers." - Sydney Harris (Journalist)

"If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner." - Omar Bradley (General, US Army)

"The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art." - John Lasseter (Director)

"Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response." - Arthur Schlesinger (Historian)

"This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature." - Don DeLillo (Author)

"This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy." - Cory Doctorow (Journalist)

"The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book." - Northrop Frye

"It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button." - John Brunner (author)

"Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head." - Jasper Fforde (novelist)

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." - Aldous Huxley

"Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." - Max Frisch

"Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers. And they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers - which is why almost no technology every works." - John Cleese

"The great myth of our times is that technology is communication." - Libby Larsen

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso

"TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public." - Douglas Coupland (Canadian novelist and artist)

Although technology has allowed us to find any place on the planet by using Google Maps or manage our finances from out smart phone, there's also a downside to technology.

Although having a GPS might be very practical to find a destination while navigating unfamiliar routes, constantly looking down at a GPS app while driving might lead cause an accident as it distracts the driver from watching the road.

According to a study published in 2012 in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, the human brain has a limited capacity in processing information at one time. Therefore, a GPS app might distract the driver from focusing on the road as they try to recall the on-screen directions, increasing the risk of accidents.

Hearing someone next to you talking on a phone might be distract you from what you are doing. According to a study by the University of San Diego, in this situation the brain tries to fill in the blanks in a halfalog - one half of a conversation. When this happens, people find it hard to concentrate on their present activity.

Although kindles have made available almost any you book you can think of anywhere and anytime, according to a study published on Research Gate, people who read a short story printed on paper are more likely to remember more details compared to those who read it on a Kindle.

The study's lead researcher from the University of Stavager in Norway, Anne Mangen, said that those reading on paper also have a tactile sense of progress as they touch and manipulate the pages. The experience is not the same with a kindle, as you flip through digital pages with the swipe of a finger.

"[The differences for Kindle readers] might have something to do with the fact that the fixity of a text on paper, and this very gradual unfolding of paper as you progress through a story, is some kind of sensory offload, supporting the visual sense of progress when you're reading," said Mangen.

Although autocorrect might be very convenient at times as it fixes typos and it corrects mistakes, it might worsen your grammar and proofreading skills. Apparently, the brain is able to understand words as long as the first and last letters are correct. Nonetheless, once the brain grows familiar with typos and grammar mistakes, people may stop seeing the difference between what's correct and what's wrong. This phenomenon might lead to failure in noticing their own mistakes while proofreading.

Detractors, including industry leaders, scientists and scholars, argue that the abuse of technology in our daily lives may hinder contemplative thought, conversation, patience and a sense of play previous generations enjoyed.

Endless hours under the influence of hyper-connectivity might hinder human attention and depth of discourse. Meanwhile, shorter attention spans and a need for instant gratification can make it harder to concentrate on and solve complex problems. Always being online can affect genuine human interaction among friends and family.

Multitasking and spending just 140 characters or less on a topic has led to a distracted generation without direction or the ability engage in deeper thinking.

According to Mashable, technology has also altered our sleeping habits. Technophiles are used to falling asleep with their laptops nearby after watching an episode on Netflix on catching with friends on social media. Other read an episode of a book on their Kindle. Those habits might be keeping us from getting enough sleep. Some neuroscientists argue that the light emitted by electronic devices' screens might mess with your body's internal light cues and sleep-inducing hormones.

Although technology may have negative effects on our brain, it makes it easier for artists and non-artists alike to engage with creative media. According to author Clay Shirkey, social media prompts users to engage with texts, images and videos in a way that simply watching television doesn't. As social media encourages users to share images and words with a community, they feel more inclined to create and share something of their own, which includes but is not limited to a Flickr album, a book review, a contribution to Wikipedia or a DIY project.

"We do things because they're interesting, because they're engaging, because they're the right things to do, because they contribute to the world," said Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, in a conversation with Wired and Shirkey.

"Once we stop thinking of all that time as individual minutes to be whiled away and start thinking of it as a social asset than can be harnessed, it all looks very different," said Shirkey. "The buildup of free time among the world's educated population — maybe a trillion hours per year — is a new resource."

If you enter a Mormon Church, you'll come across a group of missionaries holding an iPad and although you might blame it on Millennials, the truth is that missionaries use those iPads for religious purposes. They use those iPads with contact one another, to keep the Book of Mormon and other religious books handy, and to organise their lives around the Church. Technology hasn't just impacted the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) but most Churches.

Whether it enhances the worship experience as projectors empower the words on screen or allow religious communities to stay in touch in their everyday lives, technology has proven to be a great addition to the church. Technology serves as a tool to empower the religious message and to allow to reach more people on a global scale. Social networks has also helped to advertise church programmes and seeking assistance for outreach programmes.

Technology has also impacted the church's ministry. Pastor Joan Gumbs of How Ya Livin' Now share with Family and Religion that one of the negative effects of technology on anyone including Christians is the addiction element.

"Times have changed, and one can find oneself being addicted to the Internet. It is amazing to see during a service, church members checking out their Facebook profile. And if that wasn't bad enough, they an also be found tweeting about the service on the Twitter platform," she shared.

According to Gumbs, this addiction to technology can lead to alienation of some church members from others.

"Whereas there has always been cliques in the church, it was never as bad as it has become since the advent of technology in the church. If you don't have an iPhone or iPad you are not a part of the 'in' crowd," she said adding that this kind of materialistic behaviour should never be a part of Christendom.

While technology has helped the church attract non-believers to their religion, it has also led to many believers falling into the trap of being distracted from God. As people's fascination with technology grows, their beliefs start to be replaced by Internet and new electronic devices.

In this day and age, even believers are so consumer by social media that they forget to pray at night or would say a quick prayer before falling asleep.

According to Gumbs, many Christians spend more time sharing Whatsapp chain messages than spreading the word of God. The fascination with social media is such that it even steals time from community outreach.

"Some church members have abandoned actual visitation of members or those in the communities and instead replace it with 'Whatsapp groups' and 'socialising' on their phones," said Gumbs.

It's common now to see parents enjoying the message while the child sits beside them engrossed in their tablets. Although it might seem like a negative occurrence, Gumbs begs to differ.

"While it may seem counter-productive giving children tables to quiet them down in church, the reality is, tablets can be effective tools. For instance, a tablet, which is a mini computer, can have Christian programmes designed for children that can keep them engaged during service, so as not to disrupt the service," she shared.

Meanwhile, social media can also hurt the church as members of the community might tweet or post on Facebook something they dislike about the church and that might go viral, hurting the assembly.

"They can also use the video camera feature on the phone to video anyone in the congregation or on the podium for the same reason," she said.

"Technology of the 21st Century allows man to call his neighbour in Timbuktu on a device in which they can see each other even though they may be thousands of miles apart. Technology allows churches to better communicate with their members, especially those living afar," she said, adding that nothing is wrong with technology. "It has always existed and will continue to do so, with or without those of us who oppose it."

In 2018 we realise that Facebook is now doing facial recognition even on photos you're untagged in.

The myth of the surveillance society is nothing more than a myth. Just because there are security cameras in every street corner, it doesn't mean that it's infallible or that CCTV is delivering a safer society. When it comes to real-life situations, camera-based visual surveillance is not really accurate nor practical because you ultimately you need a human to watch the footage as they cannot rely on technology alone. For instance, during the 2011 London riots, facial recognition software contributed to just one arrest out of the 4,962 that took place. That is why visual surveillance still relies on people watching hours of footage - which is time consuming and unsustainable.

Software advances made in DNA sequence analysis could be a game changer in the field of video analysis software. These software tools and techniques, which treat video as a scene that evolves in the same way DNA does, could revolutionise automated visual surveillance.

While CCTV cameras create endless and complex video footage to analyse, automate video surveillance remains limited to tasks in relatively controlled environments. Although it is easy to detect a trespasser into somebody's property can be complete quite accurately, analysing footage of groups of people or identifying someone in particular in a public space is not as accurate since outdoor scenes vary and change so much.

The way to improve automated video analysis is by devising a software that can deal with this variability rather than treating as an inconvenience. One area that deals with large amounts of very variable data is genomics. The three billion DNA characters of the first human genome (the entire set of genetic data in a human) were sequenced in 2001, and since then, the production of this kind of genomic data has increased at an exponential rate. Given the amount of this data and the degree to which it can vary has led to vast amounts of money and resources being deployed to develop specialised software and computing facilities to handle it.

Thanks to this software, today it's possible for scientists to relatively easily access genome analysis services to study all sorts of things, including how to combat diseases and design personalised medical services, and even uncovering the mysteries of human history.

By investigating the mutations that have taken place over time, genomic analysis studies the evolution of genes. This can be compared to what visual surveillance is up against, which is the challenge of interpreting the evolution of a scene over time to spot and track moving pedestrians.

If we apply the same principles that are used in genomics to video surveillance, treating the images that make up a video as mutations, that we can solve the system's biggest challenge.

This practice is called "vide-omics" and it has already demonstrated its potential. For instance, one research group led by Jean-Christophe Nebel, associate professor in Pattern Recognition, Kingston University, has, for the first time, show that videos could be analysed even when captured by a freely moving camera. "By identifying camera motions as mutations, they can be compensated so that a scene appears as if filmed by a fixed camera," Nebel explained.

At the same time, researchers at the University of Verona have demonstrated that image processing tasks can be encoded such a way that standard genomics tools could be exploited. "This is particularly important since such an approach reduces significantly the cost and time of software development," Nebel said.

"Combining this with our strategy could eventually deliver the visual surveillance revolution that was promised many years ago," he added. "If the ‘vide-omics‘ principle were to be adopted, the coming decade could deliver much smarter cameras. In which case, we had better get used to being spotted on video far more often."