The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
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The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
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Mobile broadband, which recently entered the U.S. market, is rapidly becoming the 'must have' technology in an industry already accelerating its shift away from desktop computers. This high-speed, broad-reach wireless technology opens up a serious set of future possibilities for both business and entertainment markets, creating one of the most powerful growth opportunities we have ever seen.
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And computers are getting smarter all the time: scientists tell us that soon they will be able to talk to us. (By 'they' I mean 'computers': I doubt scientists will ever be able to talk to us.)
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Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
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A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
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And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy business people Get Ahead by using their Macintosh computers to create the ultimate American business product: a really sharp-looking report.
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Ooooh. So they have the internet on computers now!
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The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
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The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.'
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I was watching CNN during the riots of Los Angeles a couple of years ago and they were showing video footage of a mob looting a radio shack. Running out of the radio shack was hi-fis, video cameras and everything they could pick up. But the radio shack was right next to a Macintosh dealership which had powerbooks in the window. And it was untouched. So here these incredible valuable portable very, very powerful computers was sitting untouched behind an unbroken shop-window while the poor people steal Sony Walkmans. I felt that was so sad, and so indicative of our real problem.
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Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.
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Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question. They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was built. Finally the big day was at hand. All the computers were linked together. They asked the question, 'Is there a God?'. Lights started blinking, flashing and blinking some more. Suddenly, there was a loud crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the computers, and welded all the connections permanently together. 'There is now', came the reply.
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I am...blood. That primordial ooze. Not out there, listeners, in here. Inside this skin we wear, it only lets us think we're something else-- nice clean brains, little talking computers running around in the pursuit of happiness. We pierce this skin and what do we see Warm ooze, protoplasm churning and jesting, defecating, pulsating, life, death.
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There is never finality in the display terminal's screen, but an irresponsible whimsicality, as words, sentences, and paragraphs are negated at the touch of a key. The significance of the past, as expressed in the manuscript by a deleted word or an inserted correction, is annulled in idle gusts of electronic massacre.
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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.
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It can take quite a while for a Web page to appear on your screen. The reason for the delay is that, when you type in a Web address, your computer passes it along to another computer, which in turn passes it along to another computer, and so on through as many as 5 computers before it finally reaches the work station of a disgruntled U.S. Postal Service employee, who throws it in the trash.
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Reading computer manuals without the hardware is a frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.
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I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
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The computer is a moron.
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Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
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The fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker, and Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
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If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas.
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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.
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If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
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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.
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The new system which is being employed at the Development Therapeutics Programme in Frederick, Maryland, uses an arsenal of automated devices and computers to test potential cancer-fighting drugs on real human cancer cells grown in laboratories rather than on mice. This enables scientists to test more than 300 chemicals a week. Many of these drugs had failed in the past when tested on mice.'
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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.
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Silicon Valley is like a person running around in front of a steamroller. You can outrun the steamroller on any given day. But if you ever sit down you get squashed.
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The difference between e-mail and regular mail is that computers handle e-mail, and computers never decide to come to work one day and shoot all the other computers.
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