Quotes & Sayings About Computers

People will not die. Isn't this the creed of the new culture? People will be absorbed in streams of information. I know nothing about this. Computers will die. They're dying in their present form. They're just about dead as distinct units. — Don DeLillo

After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is breath and reboot. — Sarah Jessica Parker

Whatever the new movie about Apple founder Steve Jobs unearths, one thing is doubtless: we will switch our Apple computers right back on (maybe to talk about it, maybe not) right after we see the film. Could anything short of one genuine civic conscience, related in all sincerity stop us from miring ourselves in pirouettes of unreality, counting stickers on blue and white virtual flypaper as dearer in our imaginations than anyone in our daily lives, perhaps even our own family members? — John Thomas Allen

For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people's computers. — Elizabeth McCracken

As we build systems that are more and more complex, we make more and more subtle but very high-impact mistakes. As we use computers for more things and as we build more complex systems, this problem of unreliability and insecurity is actually getting worse, with no real sign of abating anytime soon. — Matt Blaze

The reason why Apple computers have worked so well over time is that, unlike Microsoft, they don't bend over backward to be compatible with every piece of hardware or software in the digital universe. To code or create for Apple, you follow Apple's rules. If you're even allowed to. — Douglas Rushkoff

Once we become tethered to the network, we really don't need to keep computers busy. THEY KEEP US BUSY. — Sherry Turkle

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

The diverse threats we face are increasingly cyber-based. Much of America's most sensitive data is stored on computers. We are losing data, money, and ideas through cyber intrusions. This threatens innovation and, as citizens, we are also increasingly vulnerable to losing our personal information. — James Comey

As I sat alone at the computer hour after hour it seemed I was learning "computers." In fact, I was learning culture. — Virginia Heffernan

Listening to teens talk about social media addiction reveals an interest not in features of their computers, smartphones, or even particular social media sites but in each other. — Danah Boyd

The obvious and fair solution to the housework problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up. The trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now. They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they'd never clean anything. — Dave Barry

As an evolutionary biologist, I have learned over the years that most people do not want to see themselves as lumbering robots programmed to ensure the survival of their genes. I don't think they will want to see themselves as digital computers either. To be told by someone with impeccable scientific credentials that they are nothing of the kind can only be pleasing. — John Maynard Smith

The real work of us mathematicians, from now until, roughly, fifty years from now, when computers won't need us anymore, is to make the transition from human-centric math to machine-centric math as smooth and efficient as possible. — Doron Zeilberger

I had argued that it was ridiculous for a person to have two separate interfaces, one for local information (the desktop of their own computer) and one for remote information (a browser to reach other computers). Why did we need an entire desktop for our own computer but get only a window through which to view the entire rest of the planet? Why, for that matter, should we have folders on our desktop but not on the web? — Tim Berners-Lee

Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry. He decides who's going to build. — Larry Ellison

I am a night creature, and I write from midnight till dawn, secluded in my office and surrounded by my collection of dragons (I have 400 of them). I only use Macintosh computers, which I name in dynastic order. Right now I'm using MacDragon 5. Only the devil is able to decipher my handwriting. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If chess is a vast jungle, computers are the chainsaws in a giant environmentally insensitive logging company. — Nigel Short

Just remember when you post something, the computers remember forever — Eric Schmidt

When I was at college there were two things I vowed I'd never do. One was go to a funeral and the other was deal with computers. And then I ended up being a computer programmer in a morgue. — Patricia Cornwell

One winter night, at his home, while he was stirring up the logs in his fireplace, he muttered, "Computers are irrelevant." Building — Tracy Kidder

A lot of journalists like to suck up to celebrities, and then as soon as they're a safe distance away at their computers, they take shots. But that's the way society has become, especially in pop culture. — Scott Weiland

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

I don't care how big and fast computers are, they're not as big and fast as the world. — Herbert Simon

Computers and electronic music are not the opposite of the warm human music. It's exactly the same. — Bill Laswell

The other thing is that when people mention computers - and I'm pretty much the same - they find it hard to comprehend that there's a performance there. They look at it as something that's just been made by a computer but in a way the difference is that when you make a normal film - and I'm simplifying it here - you put on the make-up and you put the scenery in before you start shooting, but with this you still perform in the same way but then you put the make-up on after, along with the costumes and scenery. — Ray Winstone

I happen to think that computers are the most important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of cat-gut which was a long time ago. — Robert Moog

A realization washed over her in that cold, dark space: this was how virtually all living things born on earth have died - with teeth tearing through their muscle and bones. We humans have computers and soap and houses but it doesn't change the fact that everything that walks is nothing but food for something else. — David Wong

Computers are no more able to create information than iPods are capable of creating music. — Robert J. Marks II

I just became one with my browser software. — Bill Griffith

The great advance of personal computers was not the computing power per se but the fact that it brought it right to your face, that you had control over it, that were confronted with it and could steer it. — Kevin Kelly

Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use. — Hal Abelson

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

Hearing may make shorter intuitive leaps than sight, but it too is subject to illusions. The most pleasant of these are 'mondegreens,' named by the author Sylvia Wright from her youthful mishearing of the Scottish ballad that actually says, 'They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / and they layd him on the green'--not, alas, 'the Lady Mondegreen.' Children, with their relaxed expectations for logic, are a rich source of these (pledging allegiance to 'one Asian in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all'), but everyone has the talent to infer the ridiculous from the inaudible--and, what's more, to believe in it. Here, at least, we do behave like computers, in that our voice-recognition software has little regard for probability but boldly assumes we live in a world of surrealist poets. We are certain that Mick Jagger will never leave our pizza burning and that the Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hot cement. — Michael Kaplan

Every one of today's smartphones has thousands of times more processing power than the computers that guided astronauts to the moon. — Peter Thiel

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers - organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative - if we don't solve these security problems, then people will hold back. — Bill Gates

Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he's a human calculator. He says it's a skill he learned as a kid. Now he's a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice. — Bill Nye

Everything that I've learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles: Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, they can make it work. Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't. PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't. — Philip Greenspun

Being able to sync the same content among multiple devices provides a very convenient backup for Dropbox data. If your Mac laptop gets dropped in your backyard swimming pool, as long as it's been recently synced, you'll still be able to quickly access all of the files and folders stored in Dropbox folder on the desktop PC. — Ian Lamont

Nowadays, the Abrahamic argument - just look at everything, how could it all be so awesome if there weren't a designer behind it? - has been judged wanting, at least in most scientific circles. But then again, now we have microscopes and telescopes and computers. We are not restricted to gaping at the moon from our cribs. We have data, lots of data, and we have the tools to mess with it. — Jordan Ellenberg

Computers are idiots whose only virtue is that they can count up to two extremely fast. — Christopher Bryan

My monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced by computers. Fortunately, for me personally, 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 honored to receive. — Milton Friedman

If Charles Lindbergh, flying with no instruments other than a bologna sandwich, managed to cross the Atlantic and land safely on a runway completely covered with French people, why are today's airplanes, which are equipped with radar and computers and individualized liquor bottles, unable to cope with fog? — Dave Barry

In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear. — John Dvorak

I don't like people who sit on computers all day long and write about people they don't know anything about. — Paris Hilton

How can you allow the trading companies to locate computers closer to exchanges and flash millions of bids to give an unfair advantage? ... Even professionals are losing faith in some aspects of the system. — Mario Gabelli

These days, young people watch TV on smartphones and computers. Young people with an actual TV set are harder to find than a picture of Anthony Weiner with his clothes on. — Craig Ferguson

For computer communications, computers talk in little bursts. They're not continuous like speech. — Bob Kahn

When you burn out, you lose enthusiasm. I always loved computers. All of a sudden I just didn't care. It was, all of a sudden, a job. — Tracy Kidder

[T]he key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines. — Erik Brynjolfsson And Andrew McAfee

So technologies, whether it is a telephone or an iPhone, computers in general or automobiles, television even, all individualize us. We all sit in front of our iPhones and communicating but are we really communicating? — Henry Mintzberg

This time was different. The tools of this era
phones, computers
enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace. — Mitch Albom

My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years in a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn't have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines...It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is *nothing*. A million years is *nothing*. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us."

- Ian Malcolm — Michael Crichton

A wide variety of devices beyond personal computers are arriving, many of which will be used to browse the Web ... The Flash engineering team has taken this on with a major overhaul of the mainstream Flash Player for a variety of devices. — Kevin Lynch

But I couldn't block out the sound of his voice. "Hayden wasn't the son I expected to have," he said. "I'd imagined playing catch in the yard, watching football on the weekends, going fishing. The things I'd done with my dad; the things I do with Ryan. It was the only kind of relationship I knew how to have with a son." His voice cracked. "But my second son didn't enjoy any of those things. He loved music and video games and computers. I didn't know how to talk to him. And now I'll spend the rest of my life wishing I'd learned how." He lowered his head, as if he were trying to hide the fact that he was crying. — Michelle Falkoff

Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother? — Orson Scott Card

It seems like everything that we see perceived in the brain before we actually use our own eyes, that everything we see is coming through computers or machines and then is being input in our brain cells. So that really worries me. — Hayao Miyazaki

We need change. I mean, our traditions are important. We shouldn't give up on those. But sometimes, I think we're misguided."
"Misguided?"
"As time's gone on, we've gone along with other changes. We've evolved. Computers. Electricity. Technology in general. We all agree those make our lives better. Why can't we be the same in the way we act? Why are we still clinging to the past when there are better ways to do things? — Richelle Mead

Over and over again, financial experts and wonkish talking heads endeavor to explain these mysterious, 'toxic' financial instruments to us lay folk. Over and over, they ignobly fail, because we all know that no one understands credit default obligations and derivatives, except perhaps Mr. Buffett and the computers who created them. — Richard Dooling

A reason to have computers understand natural language is that it's an extremely effective way of communicating. What I came to realize is that the success of the communication depends on the real intelligence on the part of the listener, and that there are many other ways of communicating with a computer that can be more effective, given that it doesn't have the intelligence. — Terry Winograd

Digital is expensive, from the computers to the professional software to the technicians, but digital helps me to create more beautiful images in less time. — Michel Ocelot

Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers. — Buzz Aldrin

We're at a crucial point in history. We cannot have fast cars, computers the size of credit cards, and modern conveniences, whilst simultaneously having clean air, abundant rainforests, fresh drinking water and a stable climate. This generation can have one or the other but not both. Humanity must make a choice. Both have an opportunity cost. Gadgetry or nature? Pick the wrong one and the next generations may have neither. — Mark Boyle

Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have. — Martin Rees

Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. — Rick Perlstein

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done. — Andy Rooney

My attraction has never been to computers per se, but to the fact that they offer a highly leveraged way to invent magic. — Blaise Aguera Y Arcas

He had tried to explain the way he felt to Danny once, about compulsive behavior and time rushing too fast and the Internet and drugs. Danny had only lifted one of his slender, mobile eyebrows and stared at him in smirking confusion. Danny did not think coke and computers were anything alike. But Jude had seen the way people hunched over their screens, clicking the refresh button again and again, waiting for some crucial if meaningless hit of information, and he thought it was almost exactly the same. — Joe Hill

I refuse to use the computers if Google is on them.'

Librarian: 'Okay.'

'--'

Librarian: '--'

'--'

Librarian: 'Enjoy your day! — Gina Sheridan

Worrying about a large institution, especially when it has computers, is like worrying about a large gorilla, especially when it's on fire. — Bruce Sterling

It is an unquestioned assumption that managers should have and set targets and then create control systems - incentives, performance appraisals, budget reporting and computers to keep track of them all - to ensure the targets are met. In Toyota, these practices simply do not exist. To — John Seddon

I joined the staff of EMI in Middlesex in 1951, where I worked for a while on radar and guided weapons and later ran a small design laboratory. During this time, I became particularly interested in computers, which were then in their infancy. It was interesting, pioneering work at that time: drums and tape decks had to be designed from scratch. — Godfrey Hounsfield

A case could be made that even the shift into R&D on information technologies and medicine was not so much a reorientation towards market-driven consumer imperatives, but part of an all-out effort to follow the technological humbling of the Soviet Union with total victory in the global class war: not only the imposition of absolute U.S. military dominance overseas, but the utter rout of social movements back home. The technologies that emerged were in almost every case the kind that proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we're constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman or Guy Debord imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect. — David Graeber

The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games. — Eugene Jarvis

Have you ever looked inside one of those things [computers]? It's a whole hierarchy of angels- all on slats. And those little tubes-those are miracles. — Joseph Campbell

Along with filters on computers and a lock on affections, remember that the only real control in life is self-control. — Jeffrey R. Holland

Ultimately, I consider people to be more important than computers. — Theodore Ts'o

Juries are not computers. They are composed of human beings who evaluate evidence differently. — Alan Dershowitz

Kids: get away from the cell phones, get away from the computers, and mail someone a fish before it's too late. — Tom Magliozzi

I didn't realize how good I was with computers until I met my parents. — Mike Birbiglia

There's an evolution from, today we tell computers to do stuff for us, to where computers can actually do stuff for us. For example, if I go and pick up my kids, it would be good for my car to be aware that my kids have entered the car and change the music to something that's appropriate for them. — Sundar Pichai

Gee, I am a complete Luddite when it comes to computers, I can barely log on! — Jonathan Shapiro

You can't have thousands of cars without good computers on the electric grid. — Shai Agassi

I know few significant questions of public policy which can safely be confided to computers. In the end, the hard decisions inescapably involve imponderables of intuition, prudence, and judgment. — John F. Kennedy

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

The hacking practice is quite widespread in its own right: one NSA document indicates that the agency has succeeded in infecting at least fifty thousand individual computers with a type of malware called "Quantum Insertion." One map shows the places where such operations have been performed and the number of successful insertions: — Glenn Greenwald

His sisters
my aunts
did not go to school at all, just like millions of girls in my country. Education had been a great gift for him. He believed that lack of education was the root of all of Pakistan's problems. Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be re-elected. He believed schooling should be available for all, rich and poor, boys and girls. The school that my father dreamed of would have desks and a library, computers, bright posters on the walls and, most important, washrooms. — Malala Yousafzai

It's a misconception that people over 65 do not use computers. They love them; they are always consulting Dr Google. — Lucien Engelen

I am not one of the new media experts working all the time with my computers and the PowerPoints and things of that sort. — Ahmed Zewail

Computers have changed the World of Chess. — Vladimir Kramnik

The ownership of computers in the home is far less than the statistics show, because usually when the computer breaks down once, that is the end of it for a long, long time. They do not have the money or incentive to get the computer repaired. — Major Owens

Lighter computers and lighter sensors would let you have more function in a given weight, which is very important if you are launching things into space, and you have to pay by the pound to put things there. — Ralph Merkle

The iPhone is made on a global scale, and it blends computers, the Internet, communications, and artificial intelligence in one blockbuster, game-changing innovation. It reflects so many of the things that our contemporary world is good at - indeed, great at. — Tyler Cowen

By 2010 computers will disappear. They'll be so small, they'll be embedded in our clothing, in our environment. Images will be written directly to our retina, providing full-immersion virtual reality, augmented real reality. We'll be interacting with virtual personalities. — Ray Kurzweil

After a semester or so, my infatuation with computers burnt out as quickly as it had begun. — Eric Allin Cornell

The computers were index-linked to the Galactic stock-market prices, you see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to afford our rather expensive services. — Douglas Adams

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

Yeah. She'd manipulated the second most powerful vampire in town into taking her side against a psycho bitch-queen sorority girl. She'd talked rationally about putting people's brains into computers. This was a normal day. No wonder she was screwed up. — Rachel Caine

Computers no longer interface with humans
they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival. — Alan Cooper

computers are limited by our ability to program them, so we've got a built-in advantage. Instead, — Randall Munroe