Popular quotes about Computers! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 86
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 DawkinsRun for your lives-the computers are invading. Awesomely powerful computers tackling ever more important tasks with awkward, old-fashioned interfaces. As these machines leak into every corner of our lives, they will annoy us, infuriate us, and even kill a few of us. In turn, we will be tempted to kill our computers, but we won't dare because we are already utterly, irreversibly dependent on these hopeful monsters that make modern life possible.
Alan CooperAs 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.
Jonathan MeadesThe whole aesthetics of computers very much feeds into my OCD. They fill my head with obsessionalities and my actions become very repetitive. It seems quite inimical to the dreamy state out of which fiction comes which seems so much less causally repetitive than the way one works on computers.
Will SelfThere is a tendency to throw computers at third world problems, which I think is often a distraction. Putting computers in the schools is great, but it may be more important to put teachers in the schools.
Terry WinogradWhat'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.
Seth LloydKeep 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!
Anna ChlumskyI 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.
Mamoru OshiiMy monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced by computers geared to provide a steady rate of growth in the quantity of money. Fortunately for me personally, and for a select group of fellow economists, that conclusion has had no practical impactโฆ else there would have been no Central Bank of Sweden to have established the award [Nobel Prize] I am honoured to receive.
Milton FriedmanOnly six electronic digital computers would be required to satisfy the computing needs of the entire United States.
Howard AikenIf 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!
Don BluthI 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.
John F. KennedyIn 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.
Nicholas NegroponteComputers are no more able to create information than iPods are capable of creating music.
Robert J. Marks IIWhen I was in Japan on tour in 2010, I felt like I was 30 years into the future. I love technology and they are so advanced with their phones, computers, everything. I think they had the iPhone way before we did in the U.S. I love gadgets, games, social media and I try to stay ahead on all that stuff, but they get it all first.
Soulja BoyIt'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 BertinoGoogle 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.
Paul BuchheitKids 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 KingI was allowed to have an imagination rather than a need to be entertained all the time by television or computers or anything like that. So, I think it's helpful to try and give your kids.
Kirsten DunstSo we and our elaborately evolving computers may meet each other halfway. Someday a human being, named perhaps Fred White, may shoot a robot named Pete Something-or-other, which has come out of a General Electric factory, and to his surprise see it weep and bleed. And the dying robot may shoot back and, to its surprise, see a wisp of gray smoke arise from the electric pump that it supposed was Mr. White's beating heart. It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them.
Philip K. DickInteractive computers and software will, I think, provide a less costly method of doing some kinds of inquiry, in knowledge acquisition and even reasoning and interaction.
Roy RomerI've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
Bill GatesCode 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.
Charles PetzoldGoogle is working on self-driving cars, and they seem to work. People are so bad at driving cars that computers don't have to be that good to be much better.
Marc AndreessenI've been working in computer animation for 25 years. I'm obviously a devotee of the technology. I just think it's the one aspect of the medium that's going to continue to revolutionize the filmmaking. It's constantly changing and it's constantly opening up new possibilities. The technology is evolving where 2-D animation was ultimately limited by how long you could pay how many people to make a movie. I mean computers, not that it's in anyway a labor saving device, but it promises to open up exciting new technical possibilites.
Chris WedgeAnd then there are difficulties. Computers are famous for difficulties. A difficulty is just a blockage from progress. You have to try a lot of things. When you finally find what works, it doesn't tell you a thing. It won't be the same tomorrow. Getting the computer to work is so often dealing with difficulties.
Ward CunninghamI 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.
Michio KakuBy 2010 computers will disappear. They'll be so small, they'll be embedded in our clothing, in our environment. Images will be written directly to our retina, providing full-immersion virtual reality, augmented real reality. We'll be interacting with virtual personalities.
Ray KurzweilComputers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs.
Seth LloydA reason to have computers understand natural language is that it's an extremely effective way of communicating. What I came to realize is that the success of the communication depends on the real intelligence on the part of the listener, and that there are many other ways of communicating with a computer that can be more effective, given that it doesn't have the intelligence.
Terry WinogradIt's a certain kind of human compact that obviously you lose as soon as there is a screen and a camera there, so I think we'll always have theater. I think theater will always be a powerful force because we need that human touch, particularly as we spend more and more time with machines, cell phones, computers we start to lose our humanity.
John Buffalo MailerWell, I had a lot of help from my father with the soldering and so on, and he was very good at math and was fascinated with computers, and so I was fortunate enough to have a bunch of exposure going all the way back to high school - this was in the 1960s.
Mitchell KaporComputers no longer interface with humans--they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival.
Alan CooperThere is this broad, broad recognition of how technology is enabling new things. Companies that never paid attention to computers in any form now see digital technology as creating threats and opportunities for them.
Bill GatesWhen things are digital, they're all 1's and zero's, and so they commingle in ways we didn't anticipate and you could do things that were not like publishing or television, or computers, but were some intersection of those and that got known to be convergence, so between the switching, or trading of places and the convergence, you have today's media.
Nicholas NegroponteI did a couple of writing seminars in Canada with high school kids. These were the bright kids; they all have computers, but they can't spell. Because spell-check won't [help] you if you don't know through from threw. I told them, "If you can read in the 21st century, you own the world." Because you learn to write from reading.
Stephen KingThis is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it.
Steve Jobs