Steven Levy Quotes & Sayings

The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industrial Revolution. — Steven Levy

To hackers, a program was an organic entity that had a life independent from that of its author. — Steven Levy

You can't argue with facts. You're not entitled to your own facts. — Steven Levy

All good teachers will tell you that the most important quality they bring to their teaching is their love for the children. But what does that mean? It means that before we can teach them, we need to delight in them. Someone once said that children need one thing in order to succeed in life: someone who is crazy about them. We need to find a way to delight in all our students. We may be the only one in their lives to do so. We need to look for the best, expect the best, find something in each child that we can truly treasure ... If children recognize that we have seen their genius, who they really are, they will have the confidence and resilience to take risks in learning. I am convinced that many learning and social difficulties would disappear if we learned to see the genius in each child and then created a learning environment that encourages it to develop. — Steven Levy

Because to hackers, passwords were even more odious than locked doors. — Steven Levy

Central tenets of the Hacker Ethic: the free flow of information, particularly information that helped fellow hackers understand, explore, and build systems. — Steven Levy

We were promised a society of philosophers. But the Blogosphere is looking more and more like a nation of ankle-biters. — Steven Levy

At the core of Silicon Valley is a passion for 'yes.' — Steven Levy

The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers
and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works
should be unlimited and total.
Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
All information should be free.
Mistrust authority
promote decentralization.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
You can create art and beauty on a computer.
Computers can change your life for the better. — Steven Levy

The fact that biological, or 'natural' rules might help in the creation of a computer generated work of art is interesting, but even a wonderful work of art made in this fashion isn't the same as a person, with all his or her experiences and emotions involved, making art. — Steven Levy

You can create art and beauty with a computer. — Steven Levy

Ideas ... [are] like babies - everything about their environment [says] they shouldn't exist. But they do. You can't dwell on problems too early, or they will swamp the virtues and you will decide not to do the project.
(Attributed to Mike Jones) — Steven Levy

Inherently, Larry & Serge aren't paper-oriented - they're product oriented. If they have another 10 minutes, they want to make something better. They don't want to take 10 minutes to tell you something they did.
- Terry Winograd — Steven Levy

the Hacker Ethic, which instructs you to keep working until your hack tops previous efforts. — Steven Levy

Find a way to delight in all students. Look for the best, expect the best, and find something in each child [you] can treasure. — Steven Levy

I think that the most beautiful thing lately hasn't been in hardware or software per se but collaboration - the idea behind Napster, which uses the distributed power of the Internet as its engine. — Steven Levy

Systems are organic, living creations: if people stop working on them and improving them, they die. — Steven Levy

She noted the lack of female hardware hackers, and was enraged at the male hacker obsession with technological play and power. — Steven Levy

Ideas, Mike Jones, an engineer at Google explained, were like babies - everything about their environment said they shouldn't exist. But they do. You can't dwell on problems too early, or they will swamp the virtues and you will decide not to do the project. — Steven Levy

Computer technology is so built into our lives that it's part of the surround of every artist. — Steven Levy

Epstein came up with an elaborate plan, including TV ads, and presented it to the board. The board rejected it.
"It really came down to this," McCaffrey later said. "We have a limited budget. Do we want to put that money into the technology, into the infrastructure, into hiring really great people? Or do we want to blow it on a marketing campaign that we can't measure?" Larry and Sergey told Epstein that his interim stint was over — Steven Levy

It's your life story if you're a mathematician: every time you discover something neat, you discover that Gauss or Newton knew it in his crib. — Steven Levy

to absorb, explore, and expand the intricacies of those bewitching systems; — Steven Levy

There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers. — Steven Levy

[Google is] an omnivorous collector of information, a hyperencyclopedic vault of human knowledge, an unerring auctioneer, an eerily skilful student of languages, behaviour, and desires. — Steven Levy