Quote, unquote

Today, two on technology, both quoted in Janelle S. Taylor, The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram (2008):

[Technology] seems "thinglike" when we point to specific objects or techniques as its most visible manifestations, but the discursive power of technology as a term is in large measure attributable to its vague, intangible, indeterminate character - the fact that it does not refer to anything as specific or tangible as a tool or a machine.

-- Leo Marx, "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept" (1997)

Those who advocate a new technique are liable to suffer from a strange condition called certainty.

-- Ann Oakley, Essays on Women, Medicine and Health (1993)