Popular quotes about Computers! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 23
Science fiction does not attempt to predict. It extrapolates. It just says, "What if?" not what will be? Because you can never predict what will happen, particularly in politics and economics. You can to some extent predict in the technological sphere - flying, space travel, but even there we missed badly on some things, like computers. No one imagined the incredible impact of computers, even though robot brains of various kinds but the idea that one day every house would have a computer in every room and that one day we'd have computers built into our clothing, nobody ever thought of that.
Arthur C. ClarkeThere is a popular clichรฉ ... which says that you cannot get out of computers any more than you have put in..., that computers can only do exactly what you tell them to, and that therefore computers are never creative. This clichรฉ is true only in a crashingly trivial sense, the same sense in which Shakespeare never wrote anything except what his first schoolteacher taught him to write-words.
Richard DawkinsWithout 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.
Dave BarryA number of people who are interested in computers in this lifetime programmed computers in Atlantis.
Frederick LenzI have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable.But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society.
Donald TrumpComputers are scary. Theyre nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.
Wesley MorrisOne of the problems with computers, particularly for the older people, is they were befuddled by them, and the computers have gotten better. They have gotten easier to use. They have gotten less expensive. The software interfaces have made things a lot more accessible
Steve CaseWith 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.
Isaac AsimovThere is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!
Richard P. FeynmanComputers are only capable of a certain kind of randomness because computers are finite devices.
Tristan PerichA mismatched outfit, a slightly defective denture, an exquisite mediocrity of the soul-those are the details that make a woman real, alive. The women you see on posters or in fashion magazines-the ones all the women try to imitate nowadays-how can they be attractive? They have no reality of their own; they're just the sum of a set of abstract rules. They aren't born of human bodies; they hatch ready-made from the computers." ~The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Milan KunderaIf security were all that mattered, computers would never be turned on, let alone hooked into a network with literally millions of potential intruders.
Dan FarmerI'm projecting somewhere between 100 million and 200 million computers on the Net by the end of December 2000, and about 300 million users by that same time.
Vinton CerfI think we are at the very beginning of high changes, not only in terms of digital film, but in the way the movies will be screened, whether they'll be screened on phones, on computers - on everything
Michel HazanaviciusI went and I started teaching computers to young kids, to fifth graders at first, later to sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth graders. I also started teaching teachers. And that was back in the days when we'd wire up the labs ourselves and crimp on the Ethernet connectors and then we would.
Steve WozniakComputers are good at swift, accurate computation and at storing great masses of information. The brain, on the other hand, is notas efficient a number cruncher and its memory is often highly fallible; a basic inexactness is built into its design. The brain's strong point is its flexibility. It is unsurpassed at making shrewd guesses and at grasping the total meaning of information presented to it.
Jeremy CampbellCorporations can deduct their planes, all their office expenses, their machinery, their computers and Teleprompters and whatever else they have. They can deduct their yachts, they can deduct their limousines, their planes, everything.
Malachy McCourtIt's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate.
Nicholas NegroponteWe live in an age now where people go to the movies and, even the biggest movies are in the theaters six, eight weeks and then gone. And then for the rest of time now people are watching them on their phones, or computers, or TVs. And that's how the films gonna live.
Bryan BertinoWe no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often "crash" when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I'm sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for "productivity"
Douglas AdamsThere are certain things I am clueless about as far as the new technologies. I see these people in front of these computers all day and I don't know what they are doing - they are doing something, obviously - with Facebook, Instagram and all that. I am aware of it, but basically not in touch.
Robert De NiroComputing is not about computers any more. It is about living. Whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education, ... We need to depend more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is one important means of doing that.
Nicholas NegroponteI'm not afraid of computers taking over the world. They're just sitting there. I can hit them with a two by four.
Thom YorkeKids absolutely not reading. I think it's because they're so screen-oriented [TVs, computers, smartphones]. They do read - girls in particular read a lot. They have a tendency to go toward the paranormal, romances, Twilight and stuff like that. And then it starts to taper off because other things take precedence, like the Kardashian sisters.
Stephen KingSo a more sensible thing it seemed to me was to go to Silicon Valley and be pushing on the technology companies to accelerate the use of audio and music in computers.
Thomas DolbyI'm really interested in the current tech world because of my brother Michael. Since we were little kids, in the 1970s, he was dealing with the first computers. He works for the government. So I know both sides of this world. I found it so interesting and I do seek it out because it's very close to me. It's not a role that existed 15 to 20 years ago.
Jimmi SimpsonWhen Colin Powell showed up as Secretary of State in 2001, most State Department employees still didn't even have computers on their desks. When I got there they were not mostly permitted to have handheld devices. I mean, so you're thinking how do we operate in this new environment dominated by technology, globalizing forces? We have to change, and I can't expect people to change if I don't try to model it and lead it.
Hillary ClintonI know so many people who actually just watch television on their computers now and don't even really watch their TV anymore.
Busy PhilippsThere is an aesthetic crisis in writing, which is this: how do we write emotionally of scenes involving computers? How do we make concrete, or at least reconstructable in the minds of our readers, the terrible, true passions that cross telephony lines? Right now my field must tackle describing a world where falling in love, going to war and filling out tax forms looks the same; it looks like typing.
Quinn NortonI'd support life extension by whatever means, from cryonic suspension to cyborgism to coding ourselves into our computers or whatever. There is nothing noble or beautiful or dignified about dying. Like poverty, it is ugly, nasty, brutal and primitive.
Robert Anton WilsonThe available worlds looked pretty grim. They had little to offer him because he had little to offer them. He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn't, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn't do it. Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.
Douglas AdamsWe should never allow computers to make inherently governmental decisions in terms of the application of military force, even if that's happening on the internet.
Edward SnowdenThere's all these ways to instantly communicate - cars, computers, telephone and transportation - and even with all that, it's so hard to find people and have an honest communication with them.
Jason SchwartzmanI was a musician who began playing with computers, to see if they could make some tasks simpler. I developed some "tricks" or strategies for working with audio files, and then discovered that the same tricks could be applied to video files, or really, any type of data. Previously I made many different kinds of music. I did some work as a composer of film scores. In that role, my task was to create audio to match and deepen the visual. In my work now, the role is often reversed: I have to create images to match and deepen the audio.
Kurt RalskeMy big dream back then was to buy an IBM Selectric. I still have that dream. I really ought to buy a word-processor. Half the cabbies at Rocky own computers. They tell me they can write failed novels ten times faster on a PC.
Gary ReillyIm pretty adept with computers and Photoshop for my blog, and I found my style with a conversational voice and an image-ready column.
Robert MankoffSome miners would have 20 pints after a hard day in the mine. Now that we sit behind computers all day, this is down to 18 or 19 pints.
Michael JacksonIt's amazing to me that we let humans drive cars... It's a bug that cars were invented before computers.
Eric SchmidtLong term, the PC and workstation will wither because computing access will be everywhere: in the walls, on wrists, and in 'scrap computers' lying about waiting to be grabbed as needed.
Mark WeiserComputers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs.
Seth LloydEquipped with cell phones, beepers, and handheld computers, the 'conspicuously industrious' blur the line between home and office by working anytime, anywhere.
Jo Ann Davis