Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel and science pioneer, talks about his views on technology. This is a segment from the full unscripted interview.

Andy Grove 1999 Interview
Interview date: August 11, 1999
Interviewers: John McLaughlin, Historian and President of the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association and Ward Winslow, historian

Interviewer's question:
"What would happen if you were to have no competitors?"

Transcript (partial):
". . . Every generation thinks they invented sex and they can’t conceive that all of those old people
and their grandparents and their great-grandparents ever were into sex. So, in a similar fashion,
there is something going on in technology. We all think that the technology that is new to us is
bigger and more transformational than all of the technology that happened before. We can’t
really make the judgment objectively because we know what we are struggling with and we
don’t know what another generation struggled with and how much impact it had to it. But the
concept of making a transatlantic phone call some number of decades ago had to have had at
least as big an impact on the people as sending an email message today or accessing a web page.
So, I kind of look at technology as a river. The raft is in the river and there are slower parts in
the river, but the river just keeps going down and technology keeps flowing and some parts of
technology do faster, but then they slow down again. This is a faster period. But I wouldn’t
characterize it as being a historically fastest because I didn’t live the other period of times and I
don’t think our generation has invented technology."

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