Quotes & Sayings About Computer Technology

For those who wish to stay and work in computer science or technology, fields badly in need of their services, let's roll out the welcome mat. — Sheldon Adelson

There already exists the electronic capability for the tracking of individual behavior by centralized networks of surveillance and record-keeping computers. It is highly probable that the conversion to nuclear energy production will provide precisely those basic material conditions most appropriate for using the power of the computer to establish a new and enduring form of despotism. Only by decentralizing our basic mode of energy production - by breaking the cartels that monopolize the present system of energy production and by creating new decentralized forms of energy technology - can we restore the ecological and cultural configuration that led to the emergence of political democracy in Europe. — Marvin Harris

I didn't realize how good I was with technology until I met my parents ... my dad told me "You're good; you should be a computer programmer." I said, "You're bad ... you should be a caveman." — Mike Birbiglia

In the old days, people robbed stagecoaches and knocked off armored trucks. Now they're knocking off servers. — Richard Power

I absolutely hate technology, and I'm computer illiterate, and I never use any labor-saving devices although I'm not convinced that a computer is a labor-saving device. — Chuck Close

I have a grandson who is 20. He's a computer guy. I'm worried that he can't communicate without his machine. They have no personal contact with people. That's the bad part of technology. — Penny Marshall

And if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain. — Edward Abbey

I have long been alarmed by people's sheeplike acceptance of the term 'computer technology' - it sounds so objective and inexorable - when most computer technology is really a bunch of ideas turned into conventions and packages. — Ted Nelson

Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline. — William J. Clinton

Twenty years ago the computer was a babbling box. Now it is a boasting beast. — David Luiz

If we want technology to serve society rather than enslave it, we have to build systems accessible to all people - be they male or female, young, old, disabled, computer wizards or technophobes. — Anita Borg

You must know your faith with the same precision with which a specialist in information technology knows the operating system of a computer. — Pope Benedict XVI

Whether it's watching a $4,000 laptop fall off the conveyor belt at airport security, contending with a software conflict that corrupted your file management system, or begging your family to stop opening those virus-carrying 'greeting cards' attached to emails, all computer owners are highly leveraged and highly vulnerable technology investors. — Douglas Rushkoff

I hope when this is done I'll be able to get back into my happy gardening vibe that was so healthy for me. I want to go back to my routine and my morning ritual with the compost, but it will probably be that my life will split in two. New Leaf Gardening in Wood Green will be happening in parallel to a fantasy that runs along the bottom of that screen like a ticker. Alice will be fine. Rabbit will stay up tonight, and every night. Resending and resending, reopening the page to see if she has responded, if anyone has. The spinning wheel will make my eyes hurt and everything else will go dark. — Olivia Sudjic

The IT people who have made such an effort to know and understand computer technology. They are frustrated that you cannot use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in China. They are the first to recognize that the situation is terrible. — Ai Weiwei

With each passing year, because of advances in computer technology, there are more things, each more sophisticated, that we aren't allowed to do any more. — Paul Lutus

Walter Isaacson, who ate dinner with the Jobs family while researching his biography of Steve Jobs, told Bilton that, "No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices." It seemed as if the people producing tech products were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing: never get high on your own supply. — Adam Alter

This is a big deal. It's a fairly natural partnership; it shouldn't surprise people, ... We're working on bringing this network-is-the-computer, Net services environment. — Scott McNealy

We tend to think that if a student is using a computer as part of an activity, then it's automatically a good activity. After all, they're using technology! But when we look at the results of that time spent at the computer, we really should be asking ourselves, how did this use of technology improve student learning? — Jane E. Pollock

I often surprise people with the simple fact that your cell phone today has more computer power than all of NASA when it put two men on the moon in 1969. Computers are now powerful enough to record the electrical signals emanating from the brain and partially decode them into a familiar digital language. This makes it possible for the brain to directly interface with computers to control any object around it. The fast-growing field is called BMI (brain-machine interface), and the key technology is the computer. — Michio Kaku

Nothing could be more misleading than the idea that computer technology introduced the age of information. The printing press began that age, and we have not been free of it since. — Neil Postman

The computer provides the only way to give students a real foundation in 21st-century skills. — Nicholas Negroponte

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

Originally, technology was pretty clearly on the side of introversion. It allowed introverts to connect with people, to express their ideas in a less stimulating way: you're sitting alone behind a computer. But I'm starting to think that the pressure to self-present constantly online is becoming so extreme. — Susan Cain

Similar to computer technology in the '60s, 3-D printing is a universal technology that has the potential to revolutionize our life by enabling individuals to design and manufacture things. — Hod Lipson

Computer games tend to be boys' games, warlike games with more violence. We have not spent enough time thinking through how to encourage more girls to be involved in computing before coming to college so they can see a possible career in information technology. — Freeman A. Hrabowski III

It's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate. — Nicholas Negroponte

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the computer code that led to the creation of the World Wide Web in 1990, he did not try to patent or charge fees for the use of his technology. — Rebecca MacKinnon

The computer may be incompetent in itself
that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured. — Laurence J. Peter

Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear. — Neil Postman

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII - and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure. — Douglas Adams

Let's stick to the practical and the concrete: Would you like it if people lived in a virtual world? If machines were smarter than people? If, in the future, people, animals and plants were products of technology? If you don't like these ideas, then for you the computer and biological sciences clearly are dangerous. — Theodore Kaczynski

I hate how it's so much easier to be open and straightforward to a computer screen than to an actual person. — Daria Snadowsky

Too few people in computer science are aware of some of the informational challenges in biology and their implications for the world. We can store an incredible amount of data very cheaply. — Sergey Brin

With the evolution of technology, kids really need to be computer-savvy. — Ryan Seacrest

He once reduced the President of the United States - then a ceremonial post, but one much loved by people who lived within the old borders - to tears of laughter at a state dinner, by delivering a learned dissertation on computer data storage technology in a flawless Texan accent. The lady was later heard to propose an amendment to the Constitution to allow off-worlders to hold high public office, so that she could have him for her running mate in the next election. It — Diane Duane

I was very much fascinated with the technology we had that we could edit in the computer our compositions, but all the sounds that were available on the market were crap. — Miroslav Vitous

When you write by hand, you don't have the excessive freedom of a computer. When I write down something, I have to be serious about it. I have to ask myself, Is this necessary at this point in the book? — Pat Conroy

When Jobs was losing his footing at Apple in the summer of 1985, he went for a walk with Alan Kay, who had been at Xerox PARC and was then an Apple Fellow. Kay knew that Jobs was interested in the intersection of creativity and technology, so he suggested they go see a friend of his, Ed Catmull, who was running the computer division of George Lucas's film studio. They rented a limo and rode up to Marin County to the edge of Lucas's Skywalker Ranch, where Catmull and his little computer division were based. "I was blown away, and I came back and tried to convince Sculley to buy it for Apple," Jobs recalled. "But the folks running Apple weren't interested, and they were busy kicking me out anyway. — Walter Isaacson

One day soon the Gillette company will announce the development of a razor that, thanks to a computer microchip, can actually travel ahead in time and shave beard hairs that don't even exist yet — Dave Barry

What is clear is that, to date, computer technology has served to strengthen Technopoly's hold, to make people believe that technological innovation is synonymous with human progress. — Neil Postman

The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry. — Henry Petroski

Over my career, I'd say the last 25 years; we've gone from music and computer being for 10 people in the world to having personal computers, to now being able to do amazing things on your iPhone, or with Rock Band. So, right now there's enormous capability with technology in our devices that everybody has access to. — Tod Machover

People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of 'Wired' magazine. Then things began to change. In the early '80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy. — Sherry Turkle

When we first started, we would message all the time, ... He would log on, and mostly we would just message back and forth at the beginning of the relationship. Now, we use the computer, phones, letters, airlines - everything. — Jill Abramson

It's like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there's some fundamental technology shift, it's just over. — Steve Jobs

I always loved both 'Breakout' and 'Asteroids' - I thought they were really good games. There was another game called 'Tempest' that I thought was really cool, and it represented a really hard technology. It's probably one of the only colour-vector screens that was used in the computer graphics field at that time. — Nolan Bushnell

Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers. — Shepherd Mead

One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer, and in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intense contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building. — Seymour Papert

Instead of five hundred thousand average algebra teachers, we need one good algebra teacher. We need that teacher to create software, videotape themselves, answer questions, let your computer or the iPad teach algebra ... The hallmark of any good technology is that it destroys jobs. — Michael J. Saylor

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

What is childhood without stories? And how will children fall in love with stories without bookstores? You can't get that from a computer. — Sarah Jio

But now with technology I could sit down and do a bunch of character drawings and scan them into a computer, and the computer using my exact style could bring it into life, where it would have been edited by various human beings before. — Bill Griffith

Technology is such a broad kind of term, it really applies to so many things, from the electric light to running cars on oil. All of these different things can be called technology. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with it, as I expect most people do. With the computer, I spend so many hours sitting in front of a computer. — Jeff Bridges

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

What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds. — Steve Jobs

What, exactly, is the Internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a "modem" can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo. — Dave Barry

I started my career as a journalist, writing about science and technology for 'Business Week' magazine. Then I decided to make a career shift. I went to graduate school in computer science, and I began developing educational technologies - in particular, technologies to engage children in creative learning experiences. — Mitchel Resnick

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

At the laboratory, Turing designed the first relatively complete electronic stored-program digital computer for code breaking in 1945. Darwin deemed it too ambitious, however, and after several years Turing left in disgust. When the laboratory finally built his design in 1950, it was the fastest computer in the world and, astonishingly, had the memory capacity of an early Macintosh built three decades later. — Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

For the blue-collar worker, the driving force behind change was factory automation using programmable machine tools. For the office worker, it's office automation using computer technology: enterprise-resource-planning systems, groupware, intranets, extranets, expert systems, the Web, and e-commerce. — Tom Peters

When developers of digital technologies design a program that requires you to interact with a computer as if it were a person, they ask you to accept in some corner of your brain that you might also be conceived of as a program. — Jaron Lanier

I love what I do, but I've got a life out of here. I like to spend time on the computer. I like technology. I like music. I like movies. I like to go out and party. I like my cigars, but I don't drink, and I do like to keep a low profile. — Carlos Delgado

The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier. — Bill Gates

I'm an enemy of what I call 'computer theology.' There's a class conflict out there. There's a techno-elite that lives in a different world. — Walt Mossberg

If you view computer designers as artists, they're really into more of an art form that can be mass-produced, like records, or like prints, than they are into fine arts. They want something where they can express themselves to a large number of people through their medium, and their medium is technology and manufacturing. — Steve Jobs

The issues involved are sufficiently important that courses are now moving out of the philosophy departments and into mainstream computer science. And they affect everyone. Many of the students attracted to these courses are not technology majors, and many of the topics we discuss relate to ethical challenges that transcend the computer world. — D. Michael Quinn

An algorithm must be seen to be believed. — Donald Ervin Knuth

The potential of any technology is always dissipated by its users involvement in its predecessors ... Computer are still serving mainly to sustain precomputer effects. — Marshall McLuhan

With current technology it is possible to put four floppy disk drives in a personal computer. It is just that doing so would be pointless. — Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Technology has come such a long way and you could pretty much do everything what's called 'in the box'. It means that it never has to leave your computer. — Tony Vincent

Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data
i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion. — Jean Baudrillard

And I make no apology for linking my thinking with computer technology. — Maxwell Frazer

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

Generating a system architecture is not a deterministic process. It requires careful consideration of business requirements, technology choices, existing infrastructure and systems, and actual physical resources, such as budget and manpower. — Andrew Holdsworth

Early on, when software was developed by computer scientists, just people working with computers, people passed around software because that was how you got computers to do things. — Tim O'Reilly

Just as computer technology and the Internet created whole new industries and extraordinary benefits for people that extend into almost every realm of human endeavor from education to transportation to medicine, genetics will undoubtedly benefit people everywhere in ways we can't even imagine but know will surely occur. — Anne Wojcicki

Social capital may turn out to be a prerequisite for, rather than a consequence of, effective computer-mediated communication. — Robert D. Putnam

Efforts to protect critical computer networks have unfortunately not kept pace with the march of technology. — Jon Kyl

I've noticed that nowadays I'm doing a lot of stuff on the phone and on the computer, which I usually wouldn't do earlier. And I can feel my brain being rewired: I'm getting anxious, I'm getting more manic. Now, I'm an extreme case because I'm old and I'm overdoing it. But still, it's really interesting that I can actually feel a change in my neurochemistry from this interaction with the technology. — George Saunders

Back in the days of Apollo, sending humans to the moon was the only viable way to get the scientific data we wanted. But now, with our computer and robotics technology, there's very little an astronaut can do on Mars that a well-designed rover can't. — Andy Weir

The computer focuses ruthlessly on things that can be represented in numbers. In so doing, it seduces people into thinking that other aspects of knowledge are either unreal or unimportant. The computer treats reason as an instrument for achieving things, not for contemplating things. It narrows dramatically what we know and intended by reason. — George Friedman

In an age of computer manipulation, surrealism has become banal, a shadow of its former self. — Milton Glaser

A fashionable idea in technical circles is that quantity not only turns into quality at some extreme of scale, but also does so according to principles we already understand. Some of my colleagues think a million, or perhaps a billion, fragmentary insults will eventually yield wisdom that surpasses that of any well-thought-out essay, so long as sophisticated secret statistical algorithms recombine the fragments. I disagree. A trope from the early days of computer science comes to mind: garbage in, garbage out. — Jaron Lanier

I was, a near grown man, sat in his dank, dark and rickety digs, feverishly hovering about the glare of a computer screen like a disorientated moth, one searching for a flaming light of recognition from someone/anyone! — Tom Conrad

For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match. — Bill Bryson

I think it is widely agreed that Carl Steinitz, over the 50 years he taught at Harvard, has been one of the most important figures in influencing the theory and practice of landscape architecture and the application of computer technology to planning. — Jack Dangermond

A computer will do what you tell it to do, but that may be much different from what you had in mind. — Joseph Weizenbaum

The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited. — Alan Kay

One good thing about my computer: it never asks why. — Ashleigh Brilliant

If you don't want to be replaced by a computer, don't act like one. — Arno Allan Penzias

I have the instruments, ideas, technology, computer techniques. We try to create or see something, which has not been known before - just to discover something together. This is always my dream. — Lennart Nilsson

The attribution of intelligence to machines, crowds of fragments, or other nerd deities obscures more than it illuminates. When people are told that a computer is intelligent, they become prone to changing themselves in order to make the computer appear to work better, instead of demanding that the computer be changed to become more useful. — Jaron Lanier

The brain processes information using 100,000 times less energy than we do right now with this computer technology that we have. — Kwabena Boahen

There's more technology in your car than there is in your computer. It's got thousands of parts in it. It's extremely sophisticated, all that robotics. — Jennifer Granholm

Yes, I play computer games. I think you've got to embrace the latest technology. For someone to dismiss games as not important would be the same as saying the Internet is not important. — Bruce Feirstein

Assigning invention in cases like this is difficult, and modern writings on technology recognize this. Says computing pioneer Michael Williams:

There is no such thing as "first" in any activity associated with human invention. If you add enough adjectives to a description you can always claim your own favorite. For example the ENIAC is often claimed to be the "first electronic, general purpose, large scale, digital computer" and you certainly have to add all those adjectives before you have a correct statement. If you leave any of them off, then machines such as the ABC, the Colossus, Zuse's Z3, and many others (some not even constructed such as Babbage's Analytical Engine) become candidates for being "first. — W. Brian Arthur

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

When computers (people) are networked, their power multiplies geometrically. Not only can people share all that information inside their machines, but they can reach out and instantly tap the power of other machines (people), essentially making the entire network their computer. — Scott McNealy

In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure - error rather than terror. — Martin Rees