Quotes About Computers

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.

Computers are here to stay. It is a major challenge for the future to use computers efficiently in combinatorics without losing its special appeal.

One of the best things I ever did was to train in a practical skill. I love computers and they've become such a part of life, especially to the world of design. But it's important to understand that they are a tool, as much as a hammer or a saw is a tool. Computers don't help you design. There needs to be more emphasis on training young designers in how to build things. A good writer needs a good vocabulary. A good designer needs to understand his materials and processes. You can't, as a successful designer, pretend to get any respect if you don't know how things are made.

I 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.

We're getting so pulled in by computers and technology, and our kids have their face in the computers all day. The human relationship is being diminished by this.

Until computers and robots make quantum advances, they basically remain adding machines: capable only of doing things in which all the variables are controlled and predictable. Robots are bad at pattern recognition and certainly at common sense. That's why computers can beat humans in chess but can't have even a basic conversation with a six-year-old.

I don't really care about labels that much. I wouldn't really call our music retro. There are influences of things from the past, which there is in everything. I think we're quite a modern band, actually. We don't record with old equipment. We use computers and programmed drums. We don't use any guitar amplifiers. We're very much a modern band in the sense that we love computers and what they can do to music. I guess we're just good at a different sound.

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.

Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.

To compare books to computers, I mean, computers are the way to get books. That is the medium for distributing text because it doesn't require paper.

Overemphasis of efficiency leads to an unfortunate circularity in design: for reasons of efficiency early programming languages reflected the characteristics of the early computers, and each generation of computers reflects the needs of the programming languages of the preceding generation.

I've always liked making things that don't deny the medium that they're made in. If it's collage, I'm happy for it to look like that. If it's a film made with computers, I don't mind that it looks like a film made with computers as long as it still has a feeling or a mood or an atmosphere that is relevant.

People are craving this great progress in electronics, going after computers, the Internet, etc. It's a giant progress technologically. But they must have a balance of soul, a balance for human beauty. That means art has an important role.

What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process.

I was always interested in technology. When personal computers came out, I was one of the first to pick one up and begin playing with it. My hobbies tend to be not about going fishing or hiking, but about playing on machines. Just like some people like helicopters and tanks and cars, I like technology a lot.

Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.

I'm bullish on writing. Movies, radio, television, and now digital media - everything was supposed to push us away from text, to video or "back" to speech. First, there's no going back. We're always stumbling forward. Second, writing is invincible. Thirty years ago, we thought we'd all be talking to our computers; instead, we're all typing on our phones.

Computers don't seem real to me because there's a sheet of glass between you and whatever is happening.

I know few significant questions of public policy which can safely be confided to computers. In the end, the hard decisions inescapably involve imponderables of intuition, prudence, and judgment.

Many state governments have launched innovative steps such as Ladli Laxmi scheme of Madhya Pradesh, PDS reform scheme of Chattisgarh, computerization of land records in Karnataka, free computers to students passing 10th standard exams, pollution control efforts in Himachal, power sector reforms in Rajasthan and Mumbai - Pune Expressway in Maharashta. These excellent innovative schemes are examples of good governance.

So I think things are going to get closer and closer to each other, because the screens will force that to happen. I think there are a lot of movies that people will only see on their computers or their iPods.

I guarantee you, yoga will compete with computers, music, sports, automobiles, the drug industry. Yoga will take over the world!

Technology is like water; it wants to find its level. So if you hook up your computer to a billion other computers, it just makes sense that a tremendous share of the resources you want to use - not only text or media but processing power too - will be located remotely.

I 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

Most people would say they live with an internal angst that they can't always put their finger on. This is because the Internet has changed our very way of being in this world, compelling us to be perpetually "on" - from our cars to our computers, our tablets to our smartphones, our desks to our living rooms or dining tables, our churches to our libraries to our schools.

It would take a lot of time and effort (to repair the computers). And they can't run (programs and games) kids are interested in today. They're not even on the Internet. We wouldn't be offering them much of a carrot.

Corporations 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.

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?

If a product costs $10,000 or $20,000 it has limited use. This is what the first computers cost! Only when almost everyone is able to afford it will it be a real thing.

Bill Gates did predict that computers for people made sense because he wrote a basic.

Over the eons I've been a fan of, and sucker for, each latest automated system to 'simplify' and 'bring order to' my life. Very early on this led me to the beautiful-and-doomed Lotus Agenda for my DOS computers, and Actioneer for the early Palm.

Google is about information and computers and making things really fast. Facebook is about the sharing and connections. These missions give these companies direction and motivation.

A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness—not necessarily with computers. The programmers in the old MIT free software community of the 60s and 70s referred to themselves as hackers. Around 1980, journalists who discovered the hacker community mistakenly took the term to mean “security breaker.”

Chess computers do not sweat during time pressure and commit costly blunders. Furthermore, the strength of these programs (over and above their faultless recall processes) lies in their capacity to make relatively superficial tactical decisions with incredible speed. Positional values, long-range strategy, aesthetic judgment, and political astuteness remain staples of human performance, man vs. machine results in the foreseeable future to the contrary not withstanding.

I don't really love computers.

Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations... They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'

People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done.

Marketing isn't done by computers, it's done by people. And people who sense opportunity and have the confidence to be remarkable will always defeat defensive actions by people who have given up.

A lot of people who work in computers think that the world is like them.

Technology has moved away from sharing and toward ownership. This suits software and hardware companies just fine: They create new, bloated programs that require more disk space and processing power. We buy bigger, faster computers, which then require more complex operating systems, and so on.

...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.

Computers have their own aleatoric aspect, too. They crash! But I'm a knob person. I like twiddling knobs.

If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.

When 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.

There's so many things happening with computers and what-not, where we may be able to live until 150 and even longer, but if the planet's not here for us to live on it, if we burn ourselves out from global warming and everything else, if we don't figure that out, if we don't figure out an alternative form of energy, I think we're in big, fat trouble.

Where do you draw the line as a human being? Written record is only, what, a couple thousand years? And this scientific revolution is less than a hundred years. And computers only a few decades! We've changed so much. It's amazing, the speed of changes.

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