COMPUTERS QUOTES III

quotations about computers

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The Star Trek computer doesn't seem that interesting. They ask it random questions, it thinks for a while. I think we can do better than that.

LARRY PAGE

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As science fiction writers began to get their first glimmerings of the kind of power that computers might someday control, their immediate reaction was one of panic. Even through the 1960s, this view of computers as powerful gods did not change; it only became more sophisticated. For instance, Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story that began with every telephone on earth ringing at the same time. Over the course of the next few hours, there were an extraordinary number of plane crashes and accidents. The punch line of the story was that the communications network that linked every machine on the planet into one vast consciousness had finally "awakened." The ringing of the phones was the birth cry of the baby and the crash of the planes was its first attempt to play. And so on. The idea was this: When the consciousness wakes up, watch out.

DAVID GERROLD

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The computer has evolved into a partner, a tool, and an environment--not just in science fiction, but in the public consciousness as well. Computers are no longer malevolent iron brains that manufacture tyrannical and oppressive answers; they are not a way to think, they are a place from which to think. The computer is an environment in which answers can be sought, created, manipulated and developed.

DAVID GERROLD

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Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in this world that just don't add up.

EVAN ESAR

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A computer is the most incredible tool we've ever seen. It can be a writing tool, a communications center, a supercalculator, a planner, a filer and an artistic instrument all in one, just by being given new instructions, or software, to work from. There are no other tools that have the power and versatility of a computer. We have no idea how far it's going to go. Right now, computers make our lives easier. They do work for us in fractions of a second that would take us hours. They increase the quality of life, some of that by simply automating drudgery and some of that by broadening our possibilities. As things progress, they'll be doing more and more for us.

STEVE JOBS

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But if these machines were ingenious, what shall we think of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage? What shall we think of an engine of wood and metal which can not only compute astronomical and navigation tables to any given extent, but render the exactitude of its operations mathematically certain through its power of correcting its possible errors? What shall we think of a machine which can not only accomplish all this, but actually print off its elaborate results, when obtained, without the slightest intervention of the intellect of man?

EDGAR ALLAN POE

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Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen?

ALAN MOORE

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You have to remember that virtual reality won't be mature for everyday use for decades perhaps, and we don't know what the real situation will be like then. It will undoubtedly be different, so to talk about how it can help, we have to talk about the present and talk about computers. I'll tell you how I think about the economic role of computers, and this might be a little cynical, but I think it's actually pretty accurate. In the industrial revolution, which is still continuing in less developed parts of the world, machines were created that replaced human labor and created free time for people. But our economic system is based on earned capital, so that if you have this free time, you also don't earn any money to buy food. And this creates a crisis. The question is, if you're going to create all this leisure time with all these industrial machines, how do you justify paying people within a capitalist system so that they can survive? I think computers are the answer. I think computers are this sort of massive work program that keeps everybody busy manipulating information, and thus able to earn their bread.

JARON LANIER

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The computer saves man a lot of guesswork, but so does the bikini.

EVAN ESAR

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We should treat computers as fancy telephones, whose purpose is to connect people.... As long as we remember that we ourselves are the source of our value, our creativity, our sense of reality, then all of our work with computers will be worthwhile and beautiful.

JARON LANIER

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Computers are really very stupid multimillion-dollar collections of wires and transistors. Plug one in and it does nothing. Yell at it, curse, kick it--and still it remains mute. The reason: no instructions. But once people write instructions, the computer becomes a marvelous tool.

STANLEY L. ENGLEBARDT

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Something else has happened with computers. 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. When I think of all the information being processed there, all the information being communicated back and forth over the Internet, or even just all the information that you and I can communicate back and forth by talking, I start to look at the total amount of information being processed by human beings -- and their artifacts -- we are at a very interesting point of human history, which is at the stage where our artifacts will soon be processing more information than we physically will be able to process.

SETH LLOYD

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Most people believe that computers are tools; at least this is the image conveyed by the dominant ideology. This viewpoint has two main components. First, computers are inert objects that persons control. Due to the dumb docility of these machines, computers are assumed to operate in a neutral, value-free manner. By processing data, these machines mechanically generate objective information. Second, computers simply wait to be used. Like all tools, computers do what they are told, therefore there is nothing fundamentally diabolical or sinister about these machines. In this sense, computers seem transparent--they do not have an agenda. As the clichéd defense of technology suggests, though machines can be turned to good or evil ends, computers themselves are basically amoral. If problems arise from this technology, then users are to blame.

VICENTE BERDAYES

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Because computers have memories, we imagine that they must be something like our human memories, but that is simply not true. Computer memories work in a manner alien to human memories. My memory lets me recognize the faces of my friends, whereas my own computer never even recognizes me. My computer's memory stores a million phone numbers with perfect accuracy, but I have to stop and think to recall my own.

ALAN COOPER

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It would be very discouraging if somewhere down the line you could ask a computer if the Riemann hypothesis is correct and it said, "Yes, it is true, but you won't be able to understand the proof."

RONALD GRAHAM

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Like the mind, the computer is useful because it produces information. Computers are also functional because they are able to produce a wide variety of responses that mimic human abilities. As the brain has been compared with the computer, the idea that the mind is a mechanical entity has become more plausible. For example, just as the computer operates on electricity, the brain is now described as an object comprised of electronically sensitive cells or neuron networks. Although the nervous system, which is the controlling agent for the body, continues to be shrouded in mystery, many investigators have found it attractive to equate the mind with the brain and to identify both with the computer.

VICENTE BERDAYES

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You'll see more and more perfection of that -- computer as servant. But the next thing is going to be computer as guide or agent. And what that means is that it's going to do more in terms of anticipating what we want and doing it for us, noticing connections and patterns in what we do, asking us if this is some sort of generic thing we'd like to do regularly, so that we're going to have, as an example, the concept of triggers. We're going to be able to ask our computers to monitor things for us, and when certain conditions happen, are triggered, the computers will take certain actions and inform us after the fact.

STEVE JOBS

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I have a real aversion to machines. I write with a pen. Then I read it to someone who writes it onto the computer. What are those computer letters made of anyway? Light? Too insubstantial. Paper, you can feel it. A pen. There's a connection. A pen goes exactly at your speed, whereas that machine jumps. And then, that machine is waiting for you, just humming "uh-huh, yes?"

FRAN LEBOWITZ

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Computers are in essence millions of tiny simple machines coordinated and connected together to accomplish a useful purpose. Comparing a computer with the human brain puts the computer at a disadvantage. The brain is so complex it's not even fully understood! By contrast all the technology involved in computers is obviously understood and harnessed by humans. Both computers and the human brain are very different in the way they handle instructions. For instance the brain handles millions of bits of information simultaneously. Most computers though, can handle just 64 bits of information at the same time; it just does it in millionths of a second. The computer then is able to handle the few instructions it receives much faster.

DEAN ORMANDY

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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 control.

JARON LANIER

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