Veblen
One of several remarkable observations:
[...] and it is this same joint stock of technology that gives to the modern world's tangible assets whatever use and value they have. Tangible assets, considered simply as material objects, are inert, transient and trivial, compared with the abiding efficiency of that living structure of technology that has created them and continues to turn them to account.(Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership: The Case of America, p. 65)
