Steve Jobs (1980):

Scientific American I think it was did a study in the early 70’s on the efficiency of locomotion. What they did was for all different species of things on the planet – birds and cats dogs and fish and man and goats and stuff – they measured how much energy does it take for a goat to get from here to there… and they ranked them and published the list, and the condor won, it took the least amount of energy to get from here to there, and man didn’t do so well, came out with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list.

But fortunately, someone at Scientific American was insightful enough to test man with a bicycle, and man with a bicycle won—twice as good as the condor, all the way off the list. And what it showed was that man is a toolmaker, has the ability to make a tool to amplify the amount of inherent ability that he has.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing here. We’re not making bicycles to be ridden between Palo Alto and San Francisco… but in general we’re making tools that amplify the human ability.

(video on computerhistory.org)

This is why I love technology.