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"The Next Computer: The hardware makes it a PC, the software makes it a workstation, the unit sales makes it a mainframe."
-Anon.
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"If a trainstation is where the train stops, what's a workstation...?"
-Anon.
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"At the dictation of a mathematician, it will solve in a matter of hours equations never before solved because of their intricacy and the enormous time and personnel which would be required to work them out on ordinary office calculators."
-Anon., New York Times, 1944
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Where the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1 1/2 tons.
-Anon., "Popular Mechanics", March, 1949
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"What goes up must come down. Ask any system administrator."
-Anon.
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"Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?"
-Anon.
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"Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad."
-Anon.
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"If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing."
-Anon.
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"Intel has announced its next chip: the Repentium."
-Anon.
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"Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand."
-Anon.
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"All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors."
-Anon.
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"Want to make your computer go really fast? Throw it out a window."
-Anon.
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The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second- rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
-Douglas Adams
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"At the present time there exist problems beyond our ability to solve, not because of theoretical difficulties, but because of insufficient means of mechanical computation."
-Howard Aiken, "Proposed Automatic Calculating Machine", 1937
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The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself.
-Howard Aiken
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“A funny thing happened on the way to the electronic revolution: we all ended up sitting at desks and working at computer terminals, with wrist pain, sore necks and backs, and stiff joints. Now high tech can be a lot healthier. These simple stretching routines — to be performed while sitting at a desk, standing at the copier, or talking on the phone — improve circulation, relieve stress, and soothe sore muscles. No equipment necessary!”
-Bob Anderson, Stretching in the Office
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Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
-Isaac Asimov
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"I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them."
-Isaac Asimov
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"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents."
-Nathaniel Borenstein
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Reading computer manuals without the hardware is a frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.
-Arthur C. Clarke
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"If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."
-Robert X Cringely
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"The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec."
-Marcus Dolengo
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"The computer is a moron."
-Peter Drucker
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I don't think there's anything unique about human intellience. All the nuerons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in a binary fashion.
-Bill Gates
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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
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The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
-Sydney J. Harris
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"I only know one person who was able to write a program in ink and have it run the first time. That was Dick Bloch. He drove nearly all of us crazy because he could do that. Since the Mark I was a relay and step counter machine, it was not too difficult to change the circuits. Every once in a while, Dick would get the idea of a new circuit that would make his problem run faster. He'd get together with one of the operators during the night and they would "fix" the circuit. The next morning my programs wouldn't run. It's much better to have machines that the programers cannot alter.
"Commander Aiken was a tough taskmaster. I was sitting at my desk one day, and he said, "You're going to write a book." I said, "I can't write a book." He said, "You're in the Navy now." And so I wrote a book. I have it here with me. This is the Mark I manual.
"Howard Aiken always said that one day we would have computers that would fit in a shoe box. I don't t know how he knew that, but he did."
-Grace Murray Hopper, [speaking at The Computer Museum], April 14, 1983
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Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.
-Grace Murray Hopper
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We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.
-Grace Murray Hopper
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"I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I've run this poem threw it,
I'm sure your pleased too no,
Its letter perfect in its weigh,
My checker tolled me sew."
-Janet Minor
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"Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked."
-Jeff Pesis
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"The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little."
-Porterfield
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"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
-Mitch Ratliffe
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-B. F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement
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"The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster."
-Adam Smith
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Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park....
Jurassic Park, that is.
-Larry Wall
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"I'm not against machines, as are some people who feel that the computer is leading us back into the jungle...I'm against machines only when the convenience they afford to some people is regarded as more important than the inconvenience they cause to all.
"In short, I don't think computers should wear the pants or make the decisions. They are deficient in humor, they are not intuitive, and they are not aware of the imponderables. The men who feed them seem to believe that everything is made out of ponderables, which isn't the case. I read a poem once that a computer had written, but didn't care much for it. It seemed to me I could write a better one myself, if I were to put my mind to it."
-E.B. (Elwyn Brooks) White, "Dear Mr. ___", "The New Yorker", 1967
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"Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window."
-Steve Wozniak
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Books about Computers
