#computer

Well, writing novels is incredibly simple: an author sits down…and writes. Granted, most writers I know are a bit strange. Some, downright weird. But then again, you’d have to be. To spend hundreds and hundreds of hours sitting in front of a computer screen staring at lines of information is pretty tedious. More like a computer programmer. And no matter how cool the Matrix made looking at code seem, computer programmers are even weirder than authors. ↗

— Christopher Hopper

#computer-science #strangeness #weirdness #writing-process #science

Mathematics provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of 'what is.' Computation provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of 'how to' . ↗

— Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman

#mathematics #sicp #science

... we have created a man with not one brain but two. ... This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. ... The patient's biological brain is the peripheral terminal -- the only peripheral terminal -- for the new computer. ... And therefore the patient's biological brain, indeed his whole body, has become a terminal for the new computer. We have created a man who is one single, large, complex computer terminal. The patient is a read-out device for the new computer, and is helpless to control the readout as a TV screen is helpless to control the information presented on it. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#computers #science-fiction #science

Information wants to be free.' So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first. I say that information doesn't deserve to be free. Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it's even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans are real, and information is not? ... Information is alienated experience. ↗

— Jaron Lanier

#information #internet #technology #experience

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numerals, and those who don't. ↗

— Ian Stewart

#computers #humor #humor

Ask not, what you must do for your computer. Fear instead, what your computer can do to you. ↗

— with apologies to John F. Kennedy

#disaster #humor #humor

Technology offers us a unique opportunity, though rarely welcome, to practice patience. ↗

— Allan Lokos

#cell-phones #compassion #computers #internet #art

Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him? ↗

— Tom Clancy

#computer #drives #embarrass #guy #him

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim. ↗

— Edsger W. Dijkstra

#artificial-intelligence #computer-science #simile #intelligence

I spend my life essentially alone at a computer. That doesn't change. I have the same challenges every day. ↗

— Dan Brown

#challenges #change #computer #day #essentially