Quotes About Computers

As primitive as digital can be, there is nothing automatic in the methods I use, it's all basically done by hand. I know nothing about computers. I don't like computers. I use them for writing because I have to. I have never had a conversation about computers in my life.

In physics, one of the most exciting areas is in nanotech. With computers exhausting the power of silicon, Silicon Valley could become a Rust Belt, unless we can find replacements, such as quantum computers and molecular computers. To be a leader in any field, one has to have a great imagination. Sure, we have to know the basics and fundamentals. But beyond that, we have to let our imagination soar.

It took me thirty-six years; and, in some fifty stories, ranging in length from short-shorts to novels, I think I must have touched, in one way or another, on every aspect of computers and computerization. And (mark this!) I did it without ever knowing anything at all about computers in any real sense. To this day, I don't. I am totally inept with machinery... on my typewriter I turn out books at the contemptible rate of one a month

Early on, when software was developed by computer scientists, just people working with computers, people passed around software because that was how you got computers to do things.

Right up till the 1980s, SF envisioned giant mainframe computers that ran everything remotely, that ingested huge amounts of information and regurgitated it in startling ways, and that behaved (or were programmed to behave) very much like human beings... Now we have 14-year-olds with more computing power on their desktops than existed in the entire world in 1960. But computers in fiction are still behaving in much the same way as they did in the Sixties. That's because in fiction [artificial intelligence] has to follow the laws of dramatic logic, just like human characters.

Without computers, the government would be unable to function at the level of effectiveness and efficiency that we have come to expect. . . . Today's government uses computers which are capable of cranking out millions of documents per day without any regard whatsoever for their content, thereby freeing government employees for more important responsibilities, such as not answering their phones.

With both people and computers on the job, computer error can be more quickly tracked down and corrected by people and, conversely, human error can be more quickly corrected by computers. What it amounts to is that nothing serious can happen unless human error and computer error take place simultaneously. And that hardly ever happens.

I've been asked to explain why I don't worry much about the topics of privacy threat...One reason is that these scenarios seem to assume that there will be large, monolithic bureaucracies...that are capable of harnessing computers for one-way surveillance of an unsuspecting populace. I've come to feel that computation just doesn't work that way. Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire.

The drugs of the future will be computers. The computers of the future will be drugs.

People think computers will keep them from making mistakes. They're wrong. With computers you make mistakes faster.

We will learn that computers, amazing as they are, still cannot come close to being as effective as human beings. A computer isn't creative on its own because it is programmed to behave in a predictable way. Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience. Computers simply cannot do that.

Every disruptive innovation is powered by a simplifying technology, and then the technology has to get embedded in a different kind of a business model. The first two decades of digital computing were characterized by the huge mainframe computers that filled a whole room, and they had to be operated by PhD Computer Scientists. It took the engineers at IBM about four years to design these mainframe computers because there were no rules. It was an intuitive art and just by trial and error and experimentation they would evolve to a computer that worked.

While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. While we fret about the decreasing cogency of public debate, computers dismiss linear argument and promote fast, shallow romps across the information landscape. While we worry about basic skills, we allow into the classroom software that will do a student's arithmetic or correct his spelling.

Keep in mind that there are computers, that do touch things up. Like when I got a hold of the poster for 'Gold Diggers,' I said: 'Hey, wait a minute! Those aren't my teeth!

There are a lot of directors out there that don't like to deal with actors, I think. Many of them have said something like, in the future they will actually manipulate the actors on their computers. But don't believe all this.

Microsoft has changed the way people think about computers.

What encryption lets us do is say, "Yes, the Internet is insecure." Bad guys are able to compromise computers everywhere, but we're able to tolerate that because if they do intercept our messages, they can't do any harm with it.

Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.

All these computers, all these handhelds, all these cell phones, all these laptops, all these servers - what we're getting out of all these connections is we're getting one machine. ... We're constructing a single, global machine.

I think the draw quotient has always been high in world championship matches because the amount of effort people put into neutralizing each other's openings. It's just now with computers that it has reached a new level.

I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything.

Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3-D situations, use more computer power than mainframe computers of the previous decade. The Sony PlayStation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.

If the machines can take the drudgery out of it and just leave us with the joy of drawing, then that's the best of both worlds - and I'll use those computers!

I like computers. I like the Internet. It's a tool that can be used. But don't be misled into thinking that these technologies are anything other than aspects of a degenerate economic system.

I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface.

I've been programming computers since elementary school, where they taught us, and I stuck with computer science through high school and college.

When I was in school, if you wanted a computer, you had to build one. But today, computers are everywhere. We're all obsessed with technology and having the latest gadgets. Nerd culture is ubiquitous.

Whether we're fighting climate change or going to space, everything is moved forward by computers, and we don't have enough people who can code

My goal wasn't to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers.

All of a sudden, if you think about the entire ecosystem of connected devices that can pull down information, access content and allow me to share and work and communicate, the vast majority now are not Windows computers. They are iPhones. They are iPads. They are Android devices.

College just didn't even have computers for an under-curriculum when I started college.

I guess that's a big problem with working with computers - you've got the luxury to keep tweaking the songs until the last second and beyond. So I don't think I'll ever have that feeling, unless I'm the one finishing the track.

I went - I had designed - in high school designed hundreds and hundreds of computers over and over and over, so I developed these skills without ever thinking I'd do it in life as job.

You really feel like you're on the cutting edge and you know you are because all the camera equipment you take for granted doesn't exist for 3-D. So all the cranes with all the stabilized heads, they don't work on 3-D because they're all built for lightweight camera packages. As soon as you kind of put two cameras together and all the other crap that they need and the cabling to go back to the computers, we've literally, the cranes on these movies, they break after a couple of days.

That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the, 'Oh, somebody coughed in the background; we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.

Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology.

I know so many people who actually just watch television on their computers now and don't even really watch their TV anymore.

Computers force us into creating with our minds and prevent us from making things with our hands. They dull the skills we use in everyday life.

It appears that the media filters we carry in our heads are like computers: they've been forced to get faster in order to keep up with the demands our high-speed society puts on them.

Before computers, telephone lines and television connect us, we all share the same air, the same oceans, the same mountains and rivers. We are all equally responsible for protecting them

You simply cannot understand psychedelic drugs, which activate the brain, unless you understand something about computers.

Whether we're fighting climate change or going to space, everything is moved forward by computers, and we don't have enough people who can code. Teaching young people to code early on can help build skills and confidence and energize the classroom with learning-by-doing opportunities. I learned how to fly a hot air balloon when I was 30,000 feet up and my life was in the balance: you can learn skills at any age but why wait when we can teach everyone to code now!

It's amazing to me that we let humans drive cars... It's a bug that cars were invented before computers.

In the old days, people thought that wouldn't be amenable to life. Modern studies with computers have shown that it's okay to be tidally locked. If a planet heats up on one side and not the other, the atmosphere can still circulate, because heat wants to move around.

I rarely saw people sitting at computers producing real code wearing ties.

We are the greatest computers in this world, but now we've created the smart phone which is smarter than us now, but we're still making dumb decisions. We have given our creations more power than we have, and that to me is dumb.

Equipped with cell phones, beepers, and handheld computers, the 'conspicuously industrious' blur the line between home and office by working anytime, anywhere.

After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is breath and reboot.