“Computers are like Old Testament gods lots of rules and no mercy.”
Computers changed everything, and they did it fast. These quotes track the digital revolution from early wonder to modern dependence, with observations from programmers, technologists, and people still trying to figure out why their printer will not work.
“Lighter computers and lighter sensors would let you have more function in a given weight, which is very important if you are launching things into space, and you have to pay by the pound to put things there.”
“Computers are like Old Testament gods lots of rules and no mercy.”
“Yeah, computers are going to take over the programming business because they have become so fast recently that they can solve the Halting Problem in five seconds flat.”
“Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.”
“If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.”
“I have a crazy amount of different jobs, so the way I manage that is to not do more than one at a time. It's like old computers that had small memory chips, they would do something called swapping, where they would fill the memory with one task, do it and get it out.”
“There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”
“I continue to meet people who have had their Web pages hijacked, their browsers corrupted, in some cases, their children exposed to inappropriate material from these dangerous programs hidden in their family computers.”
“One of the biggest challenges we had in the first decade was not that many people had personal computers. There weren't that many people to sell to, and it was hard to identify them.”
“I'm a very simple person. I don't use computers.”
“The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.”
“I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we've worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.”
“I know so many people who actually just watch television on their computers now and don't even really watch their TV anymore.”
“I was afraid of the internet... because I couldn't type.”
“When I grew up we had gym at school, two or three dance classes after school, ice skating lessons, and all sorts of sports at our finger tips. We weren't glued to computers because they didn't exist, so being active was all we knew.”
“Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.”