Quotes & Sayings About The Personal Computer

With a 100-year perspective, the real value of the personal computer is not spreadsheets, word processors or even desktop publishing. It's the Web. — Bill Atkinson

Scramble Books were written prior to the personal computer. For the most part they were used to supplement text books as a teaching and testing tool. I wrote a scramble book to help students understand the "Pythagorean theorem or Law of Pythagoras." What made these books different from text books was that the answers to questions would lead you to different pages, which in turn would confirm that either your answer was right or it would direct you to another page explaining how to arrive at the correct answer. — Hank Bracker

If there's a will, there's a way!
I feel larger than LIFE
and look up to the stars who shine down on me and have become my own personal cheerleaders ... as my fingers tap on my computer late into the night.. — Donna Scrima-Black

I feel certain that the personal computer is as revolutionary in terms of the way it will change the way we work, learn, and entertain ourselves as any of these previous advances. — Bill Gates

The paradox is that, by children taking shortcuts through computer games, through fantasies, through movies that load on all the emotional stimulation of encountering life in a stylized way - all of this is the equivalent of mainlining of paleolithic emotions, emotions about combat, about personal success, about overcoming monsters, about making powerful friendships, about winning wars and entering new territory. — E. O. Wilson

I talk to myself through the computer. I ask myself questions, leave things to be looked at again, things that you would do with a notepad. It turns out today that it's much better today to do with a personal computer rather than a notepad. — Seymour Cray

If you want access to the files of valuable information in a computer, you must understand how to retrieve the data by asking for it with the proper commands. Likewise, what enables you to get anything you want from your own personal databanks is the commanding power of asking questions. — Tony Robbins

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

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

The format's limitations are its strengths. We can't show you the monster, but why would we want to? Your imagination is a darker and scarier place than anything that can get generated on a computer. Asking the audience to use their imaginations makes it a much more personal and interactive experience. — Glenn McQuaid

The vast majority of people do not have, nor will they ever have a personal computer. They haven't been exposed to Windows or Office, or anything like that, and in their lives it's unlikely that they will. — Stephen Elop

Computer users soon learn that the miraculous powers of personal computers are based on avoidance of error. — Robert Burchfield

For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time. — Richard Stallman

With the greatest of respect, I have watched Apple from the day it started. I was publishing magazines about the Apple II before most people had ever heard what a personal computer was. — Felix Dennis

Many people suggest using mathematics to talk to the aliens, and Dutch computer scientist Alexander Ollongren has developed an entire language (Lincos) based on this idea. But my personal opinion is that mathematics may be a hard way to describe ideas like love or democracy. — Seth Shostak

A mountain of recent data on open-plan offices from many different industries corroborates the results of the games. Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They're associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their colleagues; they worry about coworkers eavesdropping on their phone calls and spying on their computer screens. They have fewer personal and confidential conversations with colleagues. They're often subject to loud and uncontrollable noise, which raises heart rates; releases cortisol, the body's fight-or-flight "stress" hormone; and makes people socially distant, quick to anger, aggressive, and slow to help others. — Susan Cain

When I left Apple, it had $2 billion of cash. It was the most profitable computer company in the world - not just personal computers - and Apple was the number one selling computer. — John Sculley

The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you - and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy. — Jonathan Zittrain

No country should waste wireless spectrum. Especially not India, where the cellphone has become the personal computer. — Ram Shriram

Amazon took the idea of a man inside the computer and created a service with the same name. A person or company can present a task to the Mechanical Turk Web site, and hordes of invisible people will chip away at it, doing work that's eerily human but requires no personal interaction and very little money. These hardworking people are like the little man inside the chess computer: you can't see them, but they're doing all the work. — Seth Godin

Unix is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic: a living body of narrative that many people know by heart, and tell over and over again - making their own personal embellishments whenever it strikes their fancy. The bad embellishments are shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved, and, over time, incorporated into the story. [ ... ] Thus Unix has slowly accreted around a simple kernel and acquired a kind of complexity and asymmetry about it that is organic, like the roots of a tree, or the branchings of a coronary artery. Understanding it is more like anatomy than physics. — Neal Stephenson

We think of them as mobile phones, but the personal computer, mobile phone and the Internet are merging into some new medium like the personal computer in the 1980s or the Internet in the 1990s. — Howard Rheingold

When Steve Jobs toured Xerox PARC and saw computers running the first operating system that used Windows and a mouse, he assumed he was looking at a new way to work a personal computer. He brought the concept back to Cupertino and created the Mac, then Bill Gates followed suit, and the rest is history. — Douglas Rushkoff

We culturally decided, as the personal computer came in, that it was for the boys. — Megan Smith

The biggest effect of the personal computer revolution has been to allow millions and millions of people to experience computers themselves decades before they ever would have in the old paradigm. — Steve Jobs

The creative imitator looks at products or services from the viewpoint of the customer. IBM's personal computer is practically indistinguishable from the Apple in its technical features, but IBM from the beginning offered the customer programs and software. Apple maintained traditional computer distribution through specialty stores. IBM - in a radical break with its own traditions - developed all kinds of distribution channels, specialty stores, major retailers like Sears, Roebuck, its own retail stores, and so on. It made it easy for the consumer to buy and it made it easy for the consumer to use the product. These, rather than hardware features, were the "innovations" that gave IBM the personal computer market. — Peter F. Drucker

Goals are for losers. Your mind isn't magic. It's a moist computer you can program. The most important metric to track is your personal energy. Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. Happiness is health plus freedom. Luck can be managed, sort of. Conquer shyness by being a huge phony (in a good way). Fitness is the lever that moves the world. Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing. — Scott Adams

The term, information at your fingertips, is to remind people what a broad role the personal computer will be playing. It's not a computation device, it's not a word processing or a spreadsheet device. It's a window onto the world of information. — Bill Gates

People tend to personalize technology so they can't get to the systemic analysis. They say, "Oh, I can't give up my personal computer." Or, "I just love radio too much." — Chellis Glendinning

If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. — Steve Jobs

When he went to PARC for his formal interview, Kay was asked what he hoped his great achievement there would be. "A personal computer," he answered. Asked what that was, he picked up a notebook-size portfolio, flipped open its cover, and said, "This will be a flat-panel display. There'll be a keyboard here on the bottom, and enough power to store your mail, files, music, artwork, and books. All in a package about this size and weighing a couple of pounds. That's what I'm talking about." His interviewer scratched his head and muttered to himself, "Yeah, right." But Kay got the job. — Walter Isaacson

I think I've owned all the models of iPods so far. And these days between my iPod, iPhone and my personal laptop computer, I'm someone who is very, very grateful for all the ways to listen to music and completely switch off from people around me and listen to the music in detail, which is very hard to do if you're in a room with other people. — Ian Anderson

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

Apple is not in the computer business. Apple is in the empowerment business. Nike is not in the sneakers business. It is in the personal goals business. Heineken is not in the beer business. It is in the party business. Forgetting — Alexander, Mr Manu

I think that the health care industry is so complex that it doesn't necessarily start with a single killer app. You go back to the early days of the personal computer - when I joined the industry, we really didn't know what the killer app was going to be. — John Sculley

The Web is actually a coming together of three technologies, if you like: the hypertext, the personal computer, and the network. So, the network we had, and the personal computers were there, but people didn't use them, because they didn't know what to use them for, except maybe for a few games. — Robert Cailliau

The young Steve Jobs had a hard time articulating something that didn't exist. He could see it, taste it, knew what it felt like, but he didn't have all the language because it hadn't been invented yet. People didn't fathom the personal computer on a mass produced level. — Joshua Michael Stern

E-mail is the most influential application ever to appear on a personal computer, and it remains sadly deficient. — Alan Cooper

Your programming leads to your thoughts; your thoughts lead to your feelings; your feelings lead to your actions; your actions leads to your results. Therefore, just as is done with a personal computer, by changing your programming, you take the first essential step to changing your results. — T. Harv Eker

Well, the thought that everybody might have a personal computer at their desk or their home was certainly not on the mainstream of anybody's activity at that time. — Jack Kilby

Personal computers were created by some teenagers in garages because the, the wisdom of the computer industry was that people didn't want these little toys on their desk. — Howard Rheingold

Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives? — Alan Kay

What wasn't made clear, and what Bill didn't even come close to revealing, was how his deep understanding of the computing needs of businesses would transform the computer business itself over the next several years, further sidelining anyone who, like Steve, chose to focus on the aesthetics and thrills of personal computers. Even though nobody recognized it at the time, Bill was about to take the personal right out of personal computing. Ironically, in so doing, he would leave an opening for Steve to fill - eventually. — Brent Schlender

We believe that within five years, 96 percent of British consumers will have access to the Internet, whether it be through a personal computer, a set-top box or a mobile phone. — Richard Branson

To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life. — Dave Barry

You need face time, not computer time. When you're in a tough job market, it's the personal touch that gets you the job. — Suze Orman

You can't get a personal computer to work without Windows (this is under the assumption you can actually get Windows to work). — Steven B. Green

When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world. — Alan Kay

I'd written personal essays before, but never on this scale
never so often and with such, er, honesty. (If by honesty I mean slashing my wrists and hemorrhaging all over the computer screen). — Ayelet Waldman

On a scale ranging from very little to too much, Merkin could just about categorize the amount of personal data stored in Master Loo's computer as a shitload. — Sorin Suciu

I often think about the many remarkable things that my personal computer can do which I never ask it to do. I probably use a small fraction of its capabilities. I often wonder if the same dynamic occurs with our capacity for creativity. — Geoffrey S. Fletcher

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