Technology Quotes

I still have my laptop but I haven't used it. I'm a paper man, not electronic.

Functions delay binding; data structures induce binding. Moral: Structure data late in the programming process.

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.

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.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs.

Though the Chinese should adore APL, it's FORTRAN they put their money on.

David and I and the rest of the Yahoos here really believe that the internet should remain as free as possible. At the same time we are a business and have fiscal responsibilities.

If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium / that is, of any extension of ourselves / result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.

Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours later your fingers are yellow and you're no longer hungry, but you haven't been nourished.

We're changing the world with technology.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

'Intel Inside': The world's most widely used warning label.

Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?

The insanity of the collective egoic mind, amplified by science and technology, is rapidly taking our species to the brink of disaster. Evolve or die: that is our only choice now.

Getting Information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include subroutines); seek it everywhere.

I think Amazon is the preeminent pioneer in building a new way of doing commerce: personalized, database-driven commerce, where the big value is not in the purchase fulfillment, but in knowing as much about a customer base of ten or twenty million people as a corner store used to know about a customer base of a few hundred. In today's mass-merchandising world, that's largely gone; Amazon is trying to use computer technology to re-establish it.

If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.

Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense.

One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that–lacking zero–they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.

Saying your OS is the best in the world 'cause more people use it is like saying McDonalds makes the best food in the world.