Did Einstein say that the technology will be allocated “generation of idiots”?

This is an expression attributed Einstein on sites with collections Quote, and the version of the phrase several Different. Visitors to questions and answers too Interestedwhether the quote really belongs to the famous physics, and Offer Discuss whether this statement is true. This quote is also found in social networks and blogs: it is distributed by users "VKontakte", "Living Journal", Twitter and other platforms.

We were not able to find a single more or less reliable evidence that Albert Einstein said something similar or even close to this. After his death, he bequeathed to transfer all his work at the University of Jerusalem, where they were digitized and laid out for free access. Search for this Archive I did not give any results. Failed to find this quote in the authoritative collection Einstein's statements published by Princeton University.

Scientist I understood The danger of the rapid development of technology, which can affect our lives not only in a positive way. In this regard, you can really believe that he could say something like that. True, his fears were concerned mainly of nuclear physics and atomic weapons, and not at all interpersonal communication. In addition, Einstein died in 1955. He found not so many technologies that could replace communication in order to seriously worry about it.

The issue of correct attribution of this quote was already interested in our colleagues-factory from Snopes, Quote investigator And Factcheck.kz. Just like us, none of them managed to find a single evidence that this expression belongs to Einstein.

The journalist and creator of the Quote Investigator site Garzon O’Tul in his book “They did not say this. Celebrity sayings: True and fiction " suggestedthat the primary source of the phrase was the 1995 film "Powder". In it between the heroes there is such dialogue:

- It became terribly obvious that our technologies surpassed our humanity.
- Albert Einstein.
“I look at you and think that someday humanity will still surpass technology.”

Perhaps it was this film that became the primary source of the phrase about technology, which then in a distorted form dispersed on the Internet.

Einstein is one of the most popular personalities on the Internet in terms of attributing a wide variety of quotes. After all, the thought expressed by the famous scientist immediately acquires a much greater weight. So this time, the phrase about technology and generation of idiots was simply attributed to physics. There is no evidence that he said something like that.