Computers Quotes

A file on a hard disk does indeed contain information of the kind that objectively exists. The fact that the bits are discernible instead of being scrambled into mush - the way heat scrambles things - is what makes them bits.But if the bits can potentially mean something to someone, they can only do so if they are experienced. When that happens, a commonality of culture is enacted between the storer and the retriever of the bits. Experience is the only process that can de-alienate information.Information of the kind that purportedly wants to be free is nothing but a shadow of our own minds, and wants nothing on its own. It will not suffer if it doesn't get what it wants.But if you want to make the transition from the old religion, where you hope God will give you an afterlife, to the new religion, where you hope to become immortal by getting uploaded into a computer, then you have to believe information is real and alive. So for you, it will be important to redesign human institutions like art, the economy, and the law to reinforce the perception that information is alive. You demand that the rest of us live in your new conception of a state religion. You need us to deify information to reinforce your faith.

~ Jaron Lanier

Forget UNIX - it will be gone in 5 years.

~ Tom Jermoluk

Being 'Tech Savvy' allows me to tie my own shoe laces, ride a tricycle, draw stick figures, play hop scotch and much, much more.Otherwise I'd be a 'Techno Illiterate'.

~ Anthony T.hincks

There’s no silver bullet solution with cyber security, a layered defense is the only viable defense

~ James Scott

Brain-like in function and speed, the internet connected over one-third of the global population. Three million searches every minute; one-hundred-trillion emails every year; more Facebook users than people in North America, all with with personal photos, videos, apps, and chats. There were dozens of dating sites, an immersive universe called 2nd Life that boasted a country-sized GDP, a slew of viruses, obnoxious advertising, more than a billion photos of naked women, and seventy-two hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. This was the environment where the friendship flourished.

~ Jake Vander-Ark

It can be argued that the computer is humanity’s attempt to replicate the human brain. This is perhaps an unattainable goal. However, unattainable goals often lead to outstanding accomplishment.

~ Zubair Saleem Fazal

I have only touched one other computer at my friend Marissa's house, and found the experience disconcerting. There was something sinister about the green letters and numbers that flashed on the screen as the computer booted up, and I hated the way Marissa stopped answering questions or noticing me the second it was turned on.

~ Lena Dunham

Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.

~ Dave Barry

the screen and keyboard account for much of computers' weight. The intelligent part of a computer is a thousand times smaller than a Gucci buckle.

~ Ted Sargent

I wonder who had the first computer dream, where, and when? I wonder if computers ever dream of humans.

~ David Mitchell

Once upon a time the world was a realm of unanswered questions and there was room in it for poetry. Man stood beneath the sky and he asked “why?”. And his question was beautiful.The new world will be a place of answers and no questions, because the only questions left will be answered by computers, because only computers will know what to ask.Perhaps that is the way it has to be.

~ James Cameron

People degrade themselves in order to make machines seem smart all the time.

~ Jaron Lanier

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

~ Tom Clancy

It is no longer just engineers who dominate our technology leadership, because it is no longer the case that computers are so mysterious that only engineers can understand what they are capable of. There is an industry-wide shift toward more product thinking in leadership--leaders who understand the social and cultural contexts in which our technologies are deployed.Products must appeal to human beings, and a rigorously cultivated humanistic sensibility is a valued asset for this challenge. That is perhaps why a technology leader of the highest status--Steve Jobs--recently credited an appreciation for the liberal arts as key to his company's tremendous success with their various i-gadgets.

~ Damon Horowitz

Database Management System [Origin: Data + Latin basus low, mean, vile, menial, degrading, ounterfeit.] A complex set of interrelational data structures allowing data to be lost in many convenient sequences while retaining a complete record of the logical relations between the missing items. -- From The Devil's DP Dictionary

~ Stan Kelly Bootle

The information age is so psychotic – without the cell phone and Internet, I would be drama free right now.

~ Lauren Barnholdt

Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.

~ Norbert Wiener

Bad economics teaches that computers can design markets. Good economics teaches that markets can design computers.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

You didn't happen to install Windows when you upgraded me, did you?

~ Kelly Mccullough

Helpfiles are traditionally outnumbered by no-help files, which superficially resemble a helpfile in form but not in content because they don't actually tell you anything you don't already know, or they answer every question except the one you're asking, or you open them and a giant animated paper clip leaps out and cheerfully asks where you want to go today. And wikis are worse.

~ Charles Stross

All perception is the result of electrical impulses in the brain - the world of the individual is tantamount to a highly advanced computer running and analyzing programs in its working memory.

~ Kevin Michel

Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace’s objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can “inject” an idea into the machine, and that it will respond to a certain extent and then drop into quiescence, like a piano string struck by a hammer. Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is therea corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be “sub-critical,” i.e. to correspond in this analogy to pilesof sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are supercritical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole “theory” consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals’ minds seem to be very definitely sub-critical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, “Can a machine be made to be super-critical?

~ Alan Turing

We conquer the Independence Day aliens by having a Macintosh laptop computer upload a software virus to the mothership (which happens to be one-fifth the mass of the Moon), thus disarming its protective force field. I don’t know about you, but back in 1996 I had trouble just uploading files to other computers within my own department, especially when the operating systems were different. There is only one solution: the entire defense system for the alien mothership must have been powered by the same release of Apple Computer’s system software as the laptop computer that delivered the virus.

~ Neil Degrasse Tyson

I am not angry at Microsoft, as they did give me Windows 10 for free! I do feel a little misled about its reliability on older computers never certified for its installation by the manufacturer though.

~ Steven Magee

I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course--the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.

~ Douglas Adams

Immaterial as water, too vast for any mortal apprehension, the Web's outstanding qualities allow us to confuse the ungraspable with the eternal.

~ Alberto Manguel

Life is meant to explore the world, not computer.

~ Vijay Dhameliya

A few years ago a friend said that I use to hunt and fish and build houses and things but now my whole life revolved around my computer I replied But my computer revolves around the world

~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Most of Csongor's time in T'Rain had been spent blundering about in a state of hapless newbie confusion. Only his long experience as a system administrator, struggling with Byzantine software installations, had prevented hum from plummeting into despair and simply giving up. Not that any of the sysadmin's knowledge and skills were applicable here. The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he'd be able to break through in the end.

~ Neal Stephenson

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.

~ Mitch Ratcliffe

What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!

~ Cory Doctorow

Comparable specification Windows 10 computers from multiple manufacturers can have very different performance between them.

~ Steven Magee

Opponents past and present have the same essential weakness about them: first they want to use you, then they want to be you, then they want to snuff you out.

~ Julian Assange

The new world will be a place of answers and no questions, because the only questions left will be answered by computers, because only computers will know what to ask

~ James Cameron

I am convinced that grandkids are inherently evil people who tell their grandparents to just go to the library and open up an e-mail account - it's free and so simple.

~ Scott Douglas

Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference, we should each be treated with appropriate respect.

~ Arthur C. Clarke

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.

~ Walter Isaacson

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

~ James Surowiecki

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

~ Louis V. Gerstner

I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I thought it was really cool, but it actually slowed me up for a while because it's so easy to revise, I tended to stay on the same page. I've learned to discipline myself.

~ E. L. Doctorow