The computer is only a fast idiot, it has no imagination; it cannot originate action. It is, and will remain, only a tool to man. (Statement on UNIVAC exhibit, New York World’s Fair, 1964)
Technology Quotes
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue.
Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.
Where a calculator on 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 perhaps weigh 1-1/2 tons. (1949)
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft, and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there’s no law against wacking them around a little. (“Porterfield”)
I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
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.
After a day spent staring at a computer monitor, think of a book as a kind of screen saver for your brain.
