Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.
Computers Quotes
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more ‘user-friendly’ Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, ‘user-friendly’ on the cover.
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
The government wants to force us to ship a browser made by a leading competitor, Netscape, with every copy of Windows – a demand that would benefit only Netscape, not consumers. Such a demand is both unprecedented and unreasonable. It’s like ordering Ford to sell autos fitted with Chrysler engines.
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
A computer, to print out a fact, Will divide, multiply, and subtract. But this output can be No more than debris, If the input was short of exact.
Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data – i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion.
They can rattle off the Manhattan telephone directory unerringly time after time, which no human can do, but they cannot begin to distinguish one face from another, as babies can do.
