Quotes About Computers

With genetic engineering, we will be able to increase the complexity of our DNA, and improve the human race. But it will be a slow process, because one will have to wait about 18 years to see the effect of changes to the genetic code. By contrast, computers double their speed and memories every 18 months. There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

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.

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.

Because I believe that humans are computers, I conjectured that computers, like people, can have left- and right-handed versions.

We are reaching the stage where the problems we must solve are going to become insoluble without computers. I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them.

I don't know whether computers are improving the style of play, I know they are changing it. Chess has become a different game, one could say that computers have changed the world of chess. That is pretty clear.

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

We physicists know that the brain is a milliwatt transmitter of radio. We have computers that can decipher much of this gibberish coming from our brain and we could then use that to control computers.

The guy who knows about computers is the last person you want to have creating documentation for people who don't understand computers.

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.

I love computers. I love writing on them. I love gadgetry. The thing is: I am a slow reader. So, if I am going to get my work done, I read, like, a newspaper and that's it. If I got into websites and the internet, I wouldn't get any work done.

Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he's a human calculator. He says it's a skill he learned as a kid. Now he's a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice.

About three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.

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!

In the world of computers and just devices in general, the lifespan, or the shelf life, is relatively short just because technology moves so fast and the costs drop so quickly and the power, whether it's computing power or memory rises very, very quickly.

Silicon Valley, after all, feeds off the existence of computers, the internet, the IT systems, satellites, the whole of micro electronics and so on, but a lot of that comes straight out of the state sector of the economy. Silicon Valley developed, but they expanded and turned it into commercial products and so on, but the innovation is on the basis of fundamental technological development that took places in places like this [MIT] on government funding, and that continues.

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.

What would the world be like if you had to develop a power yourself before you could use it? Just as a silly example: How would the comment section on YouTube change if, to use it, you had to have the schooling necessary to have a basic understanding of how computers and the internet work? More seriously, would anyone smart enough to know how to design and build a tank, or a laser guided anti-aircraft missile, or a computer and video editing software be stupid enough to join ISIS? In fact, if such knowledge was required—would it even be possible for there to be standing armies?

Similarly, computer literacy courses tend to produce computer people who know a lot about computers or a piece of software but they don't help people become fluent with the machine.

Computers get better faster than anything else ever. A child's PlayStation today is more powerful than a military supercomputer from 1996.

A typical wine writer was once described as someone with a typewriter who was looking for his name in print, a free lunch, and a way to write off his wine cellar. It's a dated view. Wine writers now use computers.

Simple molecules combine to make powerful chemicals. Simple cells combine to make powerful life-forms. Simple electronics combine to make powerful computers. Logically, all things are created by a combination of simpler, less capable components. Therefore, a supreme being must be in our future, not our origin. What if "God" is the consciousness that will be created when enough of us are connected by the Internet?!!

Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers.

If one ox could not do the job they did not try to grow a bigger ox, but used two oxen. When we need greater computer power, the answer is not to get a bigger computer, but . . .to build systems of computers and operate them in parallel.

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.

When you say "bank," a bank is a building, a set of computers and chairs and things. The bankers are the people running these banks. They're the chief officers, and they push the loans because they don't care if they go bad. For one thing, they may package these bad loans and sell them off to gullible institutional investors.

The demand for digital textbooks has increased since its introduction to the marketplace. As students become more familiar with them and computers get faster, larger and more portable, this product will gain in popularity.

...what threatens us today in the world of computers and other invasions of privacy is not a national ID card but a number of other things.

Be afraid of the Chinese. I mean, the Chinese shoot down satellites in space; they hack into Google's computers; the Osama bin Laden people can't make their underwear blow up.

I am trying to make some kind of connection to what is going on in the world, to make some sort of contact. And I use the instruments that our modern world offers, these extraordinary instruments of photography and film and computers.

Computers and games don't waste time - people do.

I happen to think that computers are the most important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of cat-gut which was a long time ago.

It was very challenging in terms of making sure that everyone is distinct. Also, we wanted to have some Asian influences as well, so that it really is a mashup. We want evidence of our presence in this world, so you'll see there's an interest in technology, that there are not complex electronics. There's electricity in this world, but computers, circuits don't work.

Computers can bully us. A slow and unreliable system will bring even the toughest soul to their knees as they find themselves completely defenseless against the erratic whims of their rogue machine.

It's a bug that cars were invented before computers.

In the summer of 1988, I received an interesting call from Bill Gates at Microsoft. He asked whether I'd like to come over and talk about building a new operating system at Microsoft for personal computers. What Bill had to offer was the opportunity to build another operating system, one that was portable.

My 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.

I began to realize something - to understand the future you have to understand physics. Physics of the last century gave us television, radio, microwaves, gave us the Internet, lasers, transistors, computers - all of that from physics.

The one thing computers have done is let us make bigger mistakes. We have to be careful not to depend on our machines.

Ultimately, I consider people to be more important than computers.

I think there's no way they should have to teach [math] now. We have computers. We no longer need to know why 3x = 2y/4.

The technocrat is the natural friend of the dictator—computers and dictatorship; but the revolutionary lives in the gap which separates technical progress from social totality, and inscribed there his dream of permanent revolution. This dream, therefore, is itself action, reality, and an effective menace to all established order; it renders possible what it dreams about.

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

Editing can alter the original meaning and context, and computers can alter the image itself. The camera can also be manipulated. At the very least, it must be turned in one direction - only one direction at a time ... Who chooses what direction to point the camera, and why?

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

Once you can understand something in a way that you can shove it into a computer, you have cracked its code, transcended any particularity it might have at a given time. It was as if we had become the gods of vision and had effectively created all possible images, for they would merely be reshufflings of the bits in the computers we had before us, completely under our command.

I spend a lot of time going over old conversation summaries. A lot of the old ones are about ideas that ended in failure, the project didn't work. But hey, you know what? That was five years ago, and now computers are faster, or some new information has come along, the world is different. So we're able to reboot the project.

If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.