Quotes About Computers

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.

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.

The first thing to note is that pornography and many abductions occur apart from the use of computers, and that most child abuse happens within the family. So I think the extra degree of danger that computers pose doesn't justify the frenzy.

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.

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

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.

There are artists that are using computers in all genres - Kendrick Lamar's music is electronic-made, and Taylor Swift is the same thing. There's a lot of pop music, underground music, and music for films made with computers. In that sense, it's not going to go away.

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.

I think computers have changed things tremendously. At one time, you tended to take the rough with the smooth. But now, because you can go back and stop and start, and have a limitless amount of tracks if anything looks remotely good, we keep it. You've got to go through the agony of sounding very human at first, and then you work on it with the aid of technology. Computers have revolutionized things in many ways allowing me to work to a standard I could have only joked about fourty years ago.

...comparing the capacity of computers to the capacity of the human brain, I've often wondered, where does our success come from? The answer is synthesis, the ability to combine creativity and calculation, art and science, into whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

I've never been that technologically savvy, my friends are actually amused by how infrequently I use computers.

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.

My 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 impact… else there would have been no Central Bank of Sweden to have established the award [Nobel Prize] I am honoured to receive.

The funny thing is that Sydney, who worked on the first film [Tron], developed a bike that had an exposed rider, but they couldn't do it because the computers weren't fast enough, so they gave it a roof, which became the iconic one. Ironically what we do now is basically what they envisioned in the first one but couldn't do technically. I mean this a full on homage in every aspect.

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.

The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesnt teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation.

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.

The Steve Jobs who founded Apple as an anarchic company promoting the message of freedom, whose first projects with Stephen Wozniak were pirate boxes and computers with open schematics, would be taken aback by the future that Apple is forging. Today there is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial than Apple itself, a testament to how quickly power can corrupt.

Computer security can simply be protecting your equipment and files from disgruntled employees, spies, and anything that goes bump in the night, but there is much more. Computer security helps ensure that your computers, networks, and peripherals work as expected all the time, and that your data is safe in the event of hard disk crash or a power failure resulting from an electrical storm. Computer security also makes sure no damage is done to your data and that no one is able to read it unless you want them to.

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.

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

Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt.

There 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.

I'm not afraid of computers taking over the world. They're just sitting there. I can hit them with a two by four.

[With quantum computers] you can calculate how many bits are in the universe, how much energy it takes to flip them, how much energy exists, and use that to rule out lots of things about the universe's history. Anything that takes more bit flips couldn't have happened.

Just remember when you post something, the computers remember forever.

The computers in Atlantis were infinitely evolved as opposed to what we see today. The science, the technology, everything was really done with light. All processing was done with light, with crystal formations and structures. Electricity is much too slow.

My e-mail address is actually my wife's e-mail address. I actually hate computers.

So 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.

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

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone's inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

Interactive 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.

If self-driving cars are going to work - they're being tested now, as you know - the computers that drive them have to have lots of practice before they're allowed to get out in a real car on the roads.

We live in a world where we're all on computers and tablets and phones, all the time, so something as odd as computer hacking or a virus is really scary because it gets to the heart of our security.

Almost every profession I look at where you require human labor or you require intelligence, I see computers being able to do better than us within the next 10 years. I'm talking about a mass replacement of humans with artificial intelligence and robots.

I'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.

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.

The cool kids have co-opted all the neat stuff ? computers, gadgets, video games. Theres no such thing as a computer geek anymore.

Regardless of how it's done, transaction costs will continue to plummet as computers get more powerful. Low transaction costs are a wonderful thing if you're in the transaction business. They're wonderful for consumers too, making it cheaper and easier to buy things and creating new things to buy.

You can involve yourself in electronics, computers, puzzles... there's a lot of creativity and brain working. There's a lot to model trains that people don't realize.

The breakup of Bell laid the foundation for every important communications revolution since the 1980s onward. There was no way of knowing that thirty years on we would have an Internet, handheld computers, and social networking, but it is hard to imagine their coming when they did, had the company that bured the answering machine remained intact.

That's what's cool about working with computers. They don't argue, they remember everything, and they don't drink all your beer.

There'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.

By the time we get to the 2040s, we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

I get hired to hack into computers now and sometimes it's actually easier than it was years ago.

Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.