Quotes & Sayings About Computing

Fairly cheap home computing was what changed my life. — Linus Torvalds

The Relativity theory, the copernican upheaval, or any great scientific convulsion, leaves a new landscape. There is a period of stunned dreariness; then people begin, antlike, the building of a new human world. They soon forget the last disturbance. But from these shocks they derive a slightly augmented vocabulary, a new blind spot in their vision, a few new blepharospasms or tics, and perhaps a revised method of computing time. — Wyndham Lewis

I have to admit it: I'm not a huge fan of the cloud computing concept. — Jamais Cascio

I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow was the Final Dawn, the last sunrise before the Earth and Sun are reshaped into computing elements. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

You have as much computing power in your iPhone as was available at the time of the Apollo missions. But what is it being used for? It's being used to throw angry birds at pigs; it's being used to send pictures of your cat to people halfway around the world; it's being used to check in as the virtual mayor of a virtual nowhere while you're riding a subway from the nineteenth century. — Peter Thiel

Our civilization is experiencing unprecedented changes across many realms, largely due to the rapid advancement of information technology. The ability to code and understand the power of computing is crucial to success in today's hyper-connected world. — Al Gore

Not fair? Oh, I'm sorry I get this lovely laptop computing device when all you get is the ability to walk, control your hands, and know you'll survive until your eighteenth birthday." Then the kid was going, "Uh, I didn't mean ... " But Tad wasn't done yet. While the whole class watched in horror, he put his hands through the metal support braces on the arms of his wheelchair and forced himself to stand up. Then he took a shaky little step to the side, gestured toward the chair, and said, "Why don't you take a turn with the laptop? You can even have my seat. — Jordan Sonnenblick

The neocortex is not like a computer, parallel or otherwise. Instead of computing answers to problems the neocortex uses stored memories to solve problems and produce behavior. — Jeff Hawkins

And while the black women are the most hidden of the mathematicians who worked at the NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and later at NASA, they were not sitting alone in the shadows: the white women who made up the majority of Langley's computing workforce over the years have hardly been recognized for their contributions to the agency's long-term success. Virginia Biggins worked the Langley beat for the Daily Press newspaper, covering the space program starting in 1958. "Everyone said, 'This is a scientist, this is an engineer,' and it was always a man," she said in a 1990 panel on Langley's human computers. She never got to meet any of the women. "I just assumed they were all secretaries," she said. Five — Margot Lee Shetterly

A bit, the smallest unit of information, the fundamental particle of information theory, is a choice, yes or no, on or off. It's a choice that you can embody in electrical circuits, and it is thanks to that that we have all this ubiquitous computing. — James Gleick

The power efficiency of computing has improved by a factor of a billion from the ENIAC computer of the 1950s to today's handheld devices. Fundamental physics indicates that it should be possible to compute even another billion times more efficiently. That would put the power of all of today's present computers in the palm of your hand. That says to me that the age of computing really hasn't even begun yet. — R. Stanley Williams

The infrastructure of today's computing environment is for good or ill structured around the Windows operating system. Can you get around that? Yes you can, but you have to work harder to do that and most individuals and most corporations are not going to make that extra effort. — Mark Hall

A typical smart phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the moon. — Nancy Gibbs

I can see a day soon where you'll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world - some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh - paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. — Thomas Friedman

Many jobs at Google require math, computing, and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more. — Thomas Friedman

It's a world of multiple screens, smart displays, with tons of low-cost computing, with big sensors built into devices. At Google, we ask how to bring together something seamless and beautiful and intuitive across all these screens. — Sundar Pichai

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions - objects, successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc, which set the computing world on its ear with the Macintosh in 1984. — Kevin Mitnick

The good news is we had this idea of cloud computing. The bad news is we were 10 years too early. — Marc Andreessen

What's needed now are software technologies that interconnect computing systems, people and data to produce more rapid answers to the questions of science, and to help researchers use computation in the most effective manner. — Bob Muglia

They don't call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I'm no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want. — Larry Ellison

perform the equivalent of all human thought over the last ten thousand years (assumed at ten billion human brains for ten thousand years) in ten microseconds.64 If we examine the "Exponential Growth of Computing" chart (p. 70), we see that this amount of computing is estimated to be available for one thousand dollars by 2080. — Ray Kurzweil

Computing is kind of a mess. Your computer doesn't know where you are. It doesn't know what you're doing. It doesn't know what you know. — Larry Page

By the 1980's and 1990's, Moore's Law had emerged as the underlying assumption that governed almost everything in the Valley, from technology to business, education, and even culture. The "law" said the number of transistors would double every couple of years. It dictated that nothing stays the same for more than a moment; no technology is safe from its successor; costs fall and computing power increases not at a constant rate but exponentially: If you're not running on what became known as " Internet time," you're falling behind. — John Markoff

Access to supercomputers. The science is well ahead of our ability to implement it. It's quite clear that if we could run our models at a higher resolution we could do a much better job-tomorrow-in terms of our seasonal and decadal predictions. It's so frustrating. We keep saying we need four times the computing power. We're talking just 10 or 20 million a year-dollars or pounds-which is tiny compared to the damage done by disasters. Yet it's a difficult argument to win. — Julia Slingo

In the 'Disruptive Broadcasting' space, TV on IP networks is now just another application in a broadband world. We have already seen the transformation of the computing and communications industry with respect to traditional telecom. Now, history is repeating itself with traditional broadcasting. — Jeff Pulver

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

To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. And in the area of computing, freedom means not using proprietary software. — Richard Stallman

We don't have enough parallel universes to allow all uses of all junction types
in the absence of quantum computing the combinatorics are not in our favor ... — Larry Wall

If everybody would agree that their current reality is A reality, and that what we essentially share is our capacity for constructing a reality, then perhaps we could all agree on a meta-agreement for computing a reality that would mean survival and dignity for everyone on the planet, rather than each group being sold on a particular way of doing things. — Francisco Varela

The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. — Richard Stallman

Watson represents merely a step in the development of smart machines. Its answering prowess, so formidable on a winter afternoon in 2011, will no doubt seem quaint in a surprisingly short time. — Stephen Baker

The world got enamored with smartphones and tablets, but what's interesting is those devices don't do everything that needs to be done. Three-D printing, virtual-reality computing, robotics are all controlled by PCs. — Michael Dell

We think computing ought to be like a telephone or a water tap or a light switch. — Scott McNealy

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

Genuinely ubiquitous computing spreads like warm Vaseline. — William Gibson

Likewise, Humanities Computing is the creative result of failure on the part of the manufacturers of early computers to produce operational machines in time to be used during the Second World War (or, one can argue, of failure on the part of the allied forces to make the war last longer). — Melissa Terras

Each time you toss out a 'singing' greeting card, you are disposing of more computing power than existed in the entire world before 1950. — Paul Saffo

Long term, the PC and workstation will wither because computing access will be everywhere: in the walls, on wrists, and in 'scrap computers' lying about waiting to be grabbed as needed. — Mark Weiser

True utility computing centers are on the horizon, but right now, the only real ones are a pale approximation of this vision. In the world that the other 99.9% of us inhabit, production systems are deployed to some relatively fixed set of resources. Applications — Michael T. Nygard

Mobile communications and pervasive computing technologies, together with social contracts that were never possible before, are already beginning to change the way people meet, mate, work, war, buy, sell, govern and create. — Howard Rheingold

It has today occurred to me that an amplifier using semiconductors rather than vacuum is in principle possible.
[Laboratory notebook, 29 Dec 1939.] — William Shockley

The old computing was about what computers could do; the new computing is about what users can do. Successful technologies are those that are in harmony with users' needs. They must support relationships and activities that enrich the users' experiences. — Ben Shneiderman

There's been a big evolution since the days of personal computing. People had a concept of one computing device per family or maybe per person. We've clearly evolved to computing devices becoming more personal. — Sundar Pichai

And Archimedes, as he was washing, thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero's crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool. He leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, "I have found it! Eureka!". — Plutarch

We're responsible for the creation of the PC industry.
The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software, that's something we brought to computing.
And so it's a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don't get in the way of that dream. — Bill Gates

For me, it matters that we drive technology as an equalizing force, as an enabler for everyone around the world. Which is why I do want Google to see, push, and invest more in making sure computing is more accessible, connectivity is more accessible. — Sundar Pichai

The standard definition of AI is that which we don't understand. — Bill Joy

Nobody programmes the brain, yet it keeps learning. India shouldn't miss the emerging age of brain-inspired computing. — Kris Gopalakrishnan

Our hardware is likely to turn into something like us a lot faster than we are likely to turn into something like our hardware. Our hardware is evolving at the speed of light, while we are still the product, for the most part, of unskilled labor. But there is another argument against the need to implant computing devices, be they glass or goo. It's a very simple one, so simple that some have difficulty grasping it. It has to do with a certain archaic distinction we still tend to make, a distinction between computing and "the world." Between, if you like, the virtual and the real. I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't. — William Gibson

At Microsoft, we're investing heavily in security because we want customers to be able to trust their computing experiences, so they can realize the full benefits of the interconnected world we live in. — Steve Ballmer

To me, thought-controlled computing is as simple and powerful as a paintbrush - one more tool to unlock and enliven the hidden worlds within us. — Ariel Garten

We believe the future of computing should be natural. — Rony Abovitz

It is no accident that in the field of philosophy ontology is the study of reality, existence and coming into being. In the fields of information retrieval (semantic search) and computing, ontology is the naming of the types, interrelationships and properties of the entities that exist (in reality or conceptually) and which define a particular domain of knowledge or expertise. — David Amerland

Internally, we're focused on building our own technology, leveraging all the momentum that's out there around wearable computing and mobile computing and PC computing. But at the end of the day, all the code we've written and all the invention we've created has been focused on our own tech and our own products. — Brendan Iribe

This is a book about the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. You might even add a seventh, retail stores, which Jobs did not quite revolutionize but did reimagine. In addition, he opened the way for a new market for digital content based on apps rather than just websites. Along the way he produced not only transforming products but also, on his second try, a lasting company, endowed with his DNA, that is filled with creative designers and daredevil engineers who could carry forward his vision. In August 2011, right before he stepped down as CEO, the enterprise he started in his parents' garage became the world's most valuable company. — Walter Isaacson

The idea of free software is that users of computing deserve freedom. They deserve in particular to have control over their computing. And proprietary software does not allow users to have control of their computing. — Richard Stallman

The iPad is the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing. — Tim Cook

Today, using the distributed computing power of the cloud and tools such as CloudCracker, you can try 300 million variations of your potential password in about twenty minutes at a cost of about $17. This means that anyone could rent Amazon's cloud-computing services to crack the average encryption key protecting most Wi-Fi networks in just under six minutes, all for the paltry sum of $1.68 in rental time (sure to drop in the future thanks to Moore's law). — Marc Goodman

My father, an entrepreneur but hardly a technologist, was looking to buy a computer to 'automate' our family business. In 1981, he characteristically dove head first into computing and bought an Osborne I. — Steven Sinofsky

It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do? — Richard Feynman

I'm not saying Abbott Computing Services suffered from an acute form of TV demographics, but, how did I get the job? I wasn't under 40. I wasn't anorexic slim. I didn't have a face that would launch a thousand ships, or even a rowboat. Of course, I was a temp, and the young and beautiful wouldn't have to look at me forever." Jo Durbin — Norma Huss

In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever. — Niklaus Wirth

If someone asks me what cloud computing is, I try not to get bogged down with definitions. I tell them that, simply put, cloud computing is a better way to run your business. — Marc Benioff

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. — Richard Hamming

If it is the case that we are merely slaves to the natural processes computing our advanced fight and flight responses, then we are never truly thinking, which means that logic and reason - the things we hold so dear - do not exist either. — Lewis N. Roe

What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90's? There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms. — Paul Boutin

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are no projects per se in the Computing Sciences Research Center. — Ken Thompson

The object of geometry in all its measuring and computing, is to ascertain with exactness the plan of the great Geometer, to penetrate the veil of material forms, and disclose the thoughts which lie beneath them? When our researches are successful, and when a generous and heaven-eyed inspiration has elevated us above humanity, and raised us triumphantly into the very presence, as it were, of the divine intellect, how instantly and entirely are human pride and vanity repressed, and, by a single glance at the glories of the infinite mind, are we humbled to the dust. — Benjamin Peirce

Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing. — Rob Pike

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

You know what? This isn't about your feelings. A human life, with all its joys and all its pains, adding up over the course of decades, is worth far more than your brain's feelings of comfort or discomfort with a plan. Does computing the expected utility feel too cold-blooded for your taste? Well, that feeling isn't even a feather in the scales, when a life is at stake. Just shut up and multiply. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything
evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing
it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing. — Michael Crichton

I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute. — Richard Stallman

I believe,' said Marcus Furius, 'that an order of male virgins who never see the light of day would be ideal for the operation of a computing machine such as this. — M T Anderson

You Can't Write Perfect Software. Did that hurt? It shouldn't. Accept it as an axiom of life. Embrace it. Celebrate it. Because perfect software doesn't exist. No one in the brief history of computing has ever written a piece of perfect software. It's unlikely that you'll be the first. And unless you accept this as a fact, you'll end up wasting time and energy chasing an impossible dream. — Andrew Hunt

One of the great things about an open system like Android is it addresses all ends of the spectrum. Getting great low-cost computing devices at scale to the developing world is especially meaningful to me. — Sundar Pichai

We are not the only avatars of humanity. Once our computing machines achieved self-consciousness, they became part of this design. — Dan Simmons

These are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest. — Samuel Johnson

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

If you think about computing, there isn't just one way to compute, just like there's not just one way to move around. You can have shoes, you can have a car, you can have a bicycle, submarine, rocket, plane, train, glider, whatever. Because you have one doesn't mean you get rid of another one ... But PCs continue to be important. — Michael Dell

For some hippies, this vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific progress as a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast, believed that technological progress would inevitably turn their libertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by the theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications would inevitably create the electronic agora - a virtual place where everyone would be able to express their opinions without fear of censorship. Despite being a middle-aged English professor, McLuhan preached the radical message that the power of big business and big government would be imminently overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on individuals. — Richard Barbrook

Computers and computing are all around us. Some computing is highly visible, like your laptop. But this is only part of a computing iceberg. A lot more lies hidden below the surface. We don't see and usually don't think about the computers inside appliances, cars, airplanes, cameras, smartphones, GPS navigators and games. — Brian Kernighan

Growing new limbs, copying internal organs like a Xerox machine, exponential increases in computing power, better eyes and ears - I could read stories like this endlessly. — S. Jay Olshansky

Meaning and value depend on human mind space and the commitment of time and energy by very smart people to a creative enterprise. And the time, energy, and brain power of smart, creative people are not abundant. These are the things that are scare, and in some sense they become scarcer as the demand for these talents increases in proportion to the amount of abundant computing power available. — Steven Weber

Computing is a big segment. It's more than just mobile devices or PCs and laptops. — Brian Krzanich

Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy. — Rob Pike

Here's what the death knell for the personal computer will sound like: Mainly I use my phone/paid, but I still use my PC to write long e-mails and documents. Most people aren't there yet, but that's where we're headed — Paul Allen

Essentially, we're always trying to reduce latency. As you try to reduce the latency of the experience, you can only get it down so far before we start running into the limitations of game engines, computing, the intensity of the experience you're trying to compute. — Brendan Iribe

In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150,000 a month. — Marc Andreessen

There's nothing in computing that can't be broken by another level of indirection. — Rob Pike

Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) is a new model of banking based on cloud computing structures of digital banking. — Chris Skinner

The immediacy of the mobile changes it from what we're accustomed to in the personal computing world to something that's instantaneous ... What's interesting and powerful about the mobile environment is that it's connected to services on the Internet. This augments both platforms. — Vint Cerf

The utility model of computing - computing resources delivered over the network in much the same way that electricity or telephone service reaches our homes and offices today - makes more sense than ever. — Scott McNealy

The Internet is a computing platform built on top of core technology. Applied technology is what gets built on top of that: It's Web services. — Fred Wilson

India for sure is a mobile-first country. But I don't think it will be a mobile-only country for all time. An emerging market will have more computing in their lives, not less computing, as there is more GDP and there is more need. As they grow, they will also want computers that grow from their phone. — Satya Nadella

My earlier exposure to physics certainly helped me in the use of biophysical techniques like crystallography, the use of computing, calculations, etc. — Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

The cloud computing model may be a wonderful system when it works, but it's a nightmare when it fails. And the more people who come to depend upon it, the bigger the nightmare. — Jamais Cascio

Software unification. So that I no longer care what computing device I pick up, whether it's a laptop or desktop, whether it's one I own or one in a public place, whether it has a small screen or a large screen. — David Gelernter