Computing Quotes

And while the black women are the most hidden of the mathematicians who worked at the NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and later at NASA, they were not sitting alone in the shadows: the white women who made up the majority of Langley's computing workforce over the years have hardly been recognized for their contributions to the agency's long-term success. Virginia Biggins worked the Langley beat for the Daily Press newspaper, covering the space program starting in 1958. "Everyone said, 'This is a scientist, this is an engineer,' and it was always a man," she said in a 1990 panel on Langley's human computers. She never got to meet any of the women. "I just assumed they were all secretaries," she said. Five ~ Margot Lee Shetterly

I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow was the Final Dawn, the last sunrise before the Earth and Sun are reshaped into computing elements. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

Genuinely ubiquitous computing spreads like warm Vaseline. ~ William Gibson

While I admire the insights of many of the people in the world of computing, I get this cold feeling that I speak a different language. ~ Clifford Stoll

There are no projects per se in the Computing Sciences Research Center. ~ Ken Thompson

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything
evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing
it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing. ~ Michael Crichton

There's nothing in computing that can't be broken by another level of indirection. ~ Rob Pike

perform the equivalent of all human thought over the last ten thousand years (assumed at ten billion human brains for ten thousand years) in ten microseconds.64 If we examine the "Exponential Growth of Computing" chart (p. 70), we see that this amount of computing is estimated to be available for one thousand dollars by 2080. ~ Ray Kurzweil

As we gradually learn to harness the optimal computing capacity of matter, our intelligence will spread through the universe at (or exceeding) the speed of light, eventually leading to a sublime, universe wide awakening. ~ Ray Kurzweil

Mobile communications and pervasive computing technologies, together with social contracts that were never possible before, are already beginning to change the way people meet, mate, work, war, buy, sell, govern and create. ~ Howard Rheingold

It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do? ~ Richard Feynman

The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can't see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases - like my ALS - without also glimpsing its dangers.
Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage.
We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our pote ~ Stephen Hawking

Microsoft and Dell have been building, implementing and operating massive cloud operations for years. Now we are extending our longstanding partnership to help usher in the new era of cloud computing, by giving customers and partners the ability to deploy the Windows Azure platform in their own datacenters. ~ Bob Muglia

Cloud computing is a challenge to security, but one that can be overcome. ~ Whitfield Diffie

Today, using the distributed computing power of the cloud and tools such as CloudCracker, you can try 300 million variations of your potential password in about twenty minutes at a cost of about $17. This means that anyone could rent Amazon's cloud-computing services to crack the average encryption key protecting most Wi-Fi networks in just under six minutes, all for the paltry sum of $1.68 in rental time (sure to drop in the future thanks to Moore's law). ~ Marc Goodman

If you read about quantum machine-learning applications that solve some conventional machine-learning problem with a fantastic speedup, always be sure to check whether they return a quantum output. Quantum outputs, such as amplitude-encoded vectors, limit the usage of applications, and require additional specification of how to extract practical, useful results. ~ Mercedes Gimeno-Segovia

Here's what the death knell for the personal computer will sound like: Mainly I use my phone/paid, but I still use my PC to write long e-mails and documents. Most people aren't there yet, but that's where we're headed ~ Paul Allen

I occasionally find myself debating with computer science colleagues whether work on the more applied side can form the basis for good academic computing research. In my view, it clearly can, as long as it yields something sufficiently novel and important concerning computing. ~ Paul S. Rosenbloom

Fairly cheap home computing was what changed my life. ~ Linus Torvalds

At what point will I be able to write an e-mail to my grandson in Bahrain merely by thinking it?"

"Thinking it?" Alif smiled contemptuously. "I expect never. Quantum computing will be the next thing, but I don't think it will be capable of transcribing thought."

"Quantum? Oh dear, I've never heard of that."

It will use qubits instead of-well, that's kind of complicated. Regular computers use a binary language to figure things out and talk to each other-ones and zeroes. Quantum computers could use ones and zeroes in an unlimited number of states, so in theory, they could store massive amounts of data and perform tasks that regular computers can't perform."

"States?"

"Positions in space and time. Ways of being."

"Now it is you who are metaphysical. Let me rephrase what I think you have said in language from my own field of study: they say that each word in the Quran has seven thousand layers of meaning, each of which, though some might seem contrary or simply unfathomable to us, exist equally at all times without cosmological contradiction. Is this similar to what you mean?"

"Yes," he said. "That is exactly what I mean. I've never heard anybody make that comparison. ~ G. Willow Wilson

It has long been my personal view that the separation of practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious. Much of the practical work done in computing, both in software and in hardware design, is unsound and clumsy because the people who do it have not any clear understanding of the fundamental design principles of their work. Most of the abstract mathematical and theoretical work is sterile because it has no point of contact with real computing. ~ Christopher Strachey

No one has a monopoly on knowledge the way that, say, IBM had in the 1960s in computing, or that Bell Labs had through the 1970s in communications. When useful knowledge exists in companies of all sizes and also in universities, non-profits and individual minds, it makes sense to orient your innovation efforts to accessing, building upon and integrating that external knowledge into useful products and services. ~ Henry Chesbrough

The purpose of quantum computing based compassionate artificial intelligence is to develop integrated systems that can preserve and enhance human values of peace, love, happiness and freedom. ~ Amit Ray

It has today occurred to me that an amplifier using semiconductors rather than vacuum is in principle possible.
[Laboratory notebook, 29 Dec 1939.] ~ William Shockley

After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy. ~ Walter Isaacson

The Beetle's body, whether it be a '49 split or a '73 Jeans Bug, or an '03 Mexican, was originally conceived in the mid 1930's. This is evident in it's body styling which aside from it's rear engine layout and absence of front radiator (or radiator!) grille, is very similar to other cars of the same period. Believe it or not, in those days streamlining was a hot new concept, kind of like how wireless networking is today with computing.
The only problem was, in the beginning they didn't seem to realize that streamlining ought to be applied sideways as well as longitudinally! ~ Christina Engela

Only six electronic digital computers would be required to satisfy the computing needs of the entire United States, ~ Howard Aiken

Cloud computing seems to be following this evolutionary path: A - Internet backbone. B - Information Superhighway. C - The Net. D - The Web. E - The Cloud. F - "Ubiquity" G - ??? ... ~ Bruce Sterling

You Can't Write Perfect Software. Did that hurt? It shouldn't. Accept it as an axiom of life. Embrace it. Celebrate it. Because perfect software doesn't exist. No one in the brief history of computing has ever written a piece of perfect software. It's unlikely that you'll be the first. And unless you accept this as a fact, you'll end up wasting time and energy chasing an impossible dream. ~ Andrew Hunt

By the 1980's and 1990's, Moore's Law had emerged as the underlying assumption that governed almost everything in the Valley, from technology to business, education, and even culture. The "law" said the number of transistors would double every couple of years. It dictated that nothing stays the same for more than a moment; no technology is safe from its successor; costs fall and computing power increases not at a constant rate but exponentially: If you're not running on what became known as " Internet time," you're falling behind. ~ John Markoff

The beauty of quantum machine learning is that we do not need to depend on an algorithm like gradient descent or convex objective function. The objective function can be nonconvex or something else. ~ Amit Ray

Alan Turing gave us a mathematical model of digital computing that has completely withstood the test of time. He gave us a very, very clear description that was truly prophetic. ~ George Dyson

Instruction tables will have to be made up by mathematicians with computing experience and perhaps a certain puzzle-solving ability. There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself. ~ Alan Turing

The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly. A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional aesthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct. ~ Donald Ervin Knuth

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc, which set the computing world on its ear with the Macintosh in 1984. ~ Kevin Mitnick

Just like the way a beautiful butterfly can't come into life without its transformation cycle from egg to larva, caterpillar to pupa and finally to a brilliant creation, to become a successful digitally transformed organisation, similar transformational stages are essential. ~ Enamul Haque

One of the great things about an open system like Android is it addresses all ends of the spectrum. Getting great low-cost computing devices at scale to the developing world is especially meaningful to me. ~ Sundar Pichai

Information theory began as a bridge from mathematics to electrical engineering and from there to computing. ~ James Gleick

The old computing was about what computers could do; the new computing is about what users can do. Successful technologies are those that are in harmony with users' needs. They must support relationships and activities that enrich the users' experiences. ~ Ben Shneiderman

I would like to emphasize strongly my belief that the era of computing chemists, when hundreds if not thousands of chemists will go to the computing machine instead of the laboratory for increasingly many facets of chemical information, is already at hand. There is only one obstacle, namely that someone must pay for the computing time. ~ Robert S. Mulliken

sustained exponential improvement in most aspects of computing, extraordinarily large amounts of digitized information, and recombinant innovation. These three forces are yielding breakthroughs that convert science fiction into everyday reality, ~ Anonymous

The world of the rayons is the quasi non-physical world. It is the birth place of quanta - the worlds of the fermions and the bosons. ~ Amit Ray

With the advent of computing, human invention crossed a threshold into a world different from everything that came before. The computer is the universal machine almost by definition, machine-of-all-trades, capable of accomplishing or simulating just about any task that can be logically defined. ~ James Gleick

That, ultimately, is the critical flaw or design defect intentionally integrated into every system, in both politics and computing: the people who create the rules have no incentive to act against themselves. ~ Edward Snowden

I find imaginary numbers useful when computing my tax deductions. ~ Ramamurti Shankar

Cloud computing offers individuals access to data and applications from nearly any point of access to the Internet, offers businesses a whole new way to cut costs for technical infrastructure, and offers big computer companies a potentially giant market for hardware and services. ~ Jamais Cascio

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some. ~ Alan Perlis

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. ~ Richard Stallman

The basic problem for Lawrence was that he was lazy. He had figured out that everything was much simpler if, like Superman with his X-ray vision, you just stared through the cosmetic distractions and saw the underlying mathematical skeleton. Once you found the math in a thing, you knew everything about it, and you could manipulate it to your heart's content with nothing more than a pencil and a napkin. He saw it in the curve of the silver bars on his glockenspiel, saw it in the catenary arch of a bridge and in the capacitor-studded drum of Atanasoff and Berry's computing machine. Actually pounding on the glockenspiel, riveting the bridge together, or trying to figure out why the computing machine wasn't working were not as interesting to him. ~ Neal Stephenson

The universe is computing its own destiny. ~ James Gleick

The Internet is a computing platform built on top of core technology. Applied technology is what gets built on top of that: It's Web services. ~ Fred Wilson

I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't. Or, to put it another way, they will not know "computers" as any distinct category of object or function. This, I think, is the logical outcome of genuinely ubiquitous computing: the wired world. The wired world will consist, in effect, of a single unbroken interface. The ~ William Gibson

Women tended to be more docile and patient, so went the belief, and could be depended upon more than men to check and recheck the accuracy of their calculations. A typical picture of the Galton Biometrical Laboratory under Karl Pearson would have Pearson and several men walking around, looking at output from the computers or discussing deep mathematical ideas, while all about them rows of women were computing. ~ David Salsburg

Such is modern computing: everything simple is made too complicated because it's easy to fiddle with; everything complicated stays complicated because it's hard to fix. ~ Rob Pike

You know what? This isn't about your feelings. A human life, with all its joys and all its pains, adding up over the course of decades, is worth far more than your brain's feelings of comfort or discomfort with a plan. Does computing the expected utility feel too cold-blooded for your taste? Well, that feeling isn't even a feather in the scales, when a life is at stake. Just shut up and multiply. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

What wasn't made clear, and what Bill didn't even come close to revealing, was how his deep understanding of the computing needs of businesses would transform the computer business itself over the next several years, further sidelining anyone who, like Steve, chose to focus on the aesthetics and thrills of personal computers. Even though nobody recognized it at the time, Bill was about to take the personal right out of personal computing. Ironically, in so doing, he would leave an opening for Steve to fill - eventually. ~ Brent Schlender

Spurred on by both the science and science fiction of our time, my generation of researchers and engineers grew up to ask what if? and what's next? We went on to pursue new disciplines like computer vision, artificial intelligence, real-time speech translation, machine learning, and quantum computing. ~ Elizabeth Bear

For some hippies, this vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific progress as a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast, believed that technological progress would inevitably turn their libertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by the theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications would inevitably create the electronic agora - a virtual place where everyone would be able to express their opinions without fear of censorship. Despite being a middle-aged English professor, McLuhan preached the radical message that the power of big business and big government would be imminently overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on individuals. ~ Richard Barbrook

Likewise, Humanities Computing is the creative result of failure on the part of the manufacturers of early computers to produce operational machines in time to be used during the Second World War (or, one can argue, of failure on the part of the allied forces to make the war last longer). ~ Melissa Terras

A typical smart phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the moon. ~ Nancy Gibbs

Men are noisy, narrow-band devices, but their nervous systems have very many parallel and simultaneously active channels. Relative to men, computing machines are very fast and very accurate, but they are constrained to perform only one or a few elementary operations at a time. Men are flexible, capable of "programming themselves contingently" on the basis of newly received information. Computing machines are single-minded, constrained by their "pre-programming." ~ J. C. R. Licklider

There's more noise that comes with wearable computing, things that let us take pictures every 30 seconds as we walk around living our lives, and a huge number more photos per person will exist. ~ Robert Scoble

The NeXT purchase is too little too late. The Apple of the past was an innovative company that used software and hardware technology together to redefine the way people experienced computing. That Apple is already dead. Very adroit moves might be able to save the brand name. A company with the letters A-P-P-L-E in its name might survive, but it won't be the Apple of yore. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

Hence paradoxically, as we accumulate more data and increase our computing power, events become wilder and more unexpected. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. And in the area of computing, freedom means not using proprietary software. ~ Richard Stallman

Computer games tend to be boys' games, warlike games with more violence. We have not spent enough time thinking through how to encourage more girls to be involved in computing before coming to college so they can see a possible career in information technology. ~ Freeman A. Hrabowski III

Each time you toss out a 'singing' greeting card, you are disposing of more computing power than existed in the entire world before 1950. ~ Paul Saffo

It's possible to do computing in the Cloud, PlayStation 4 can do computing in the Cloud. We do something today: Matchmaking is done in the Cloud and it works very well. If we think about things that don't work well ... Trying to boost the quality of the graphics, that won't work well in the Cloud. ~ Mark Cerny

Quantum artificial intelligence put greater importance to human peace, economic, social, political and cultural rights. It focuses on fundamental freedoms and well-being for all without distinction to race, color, sex, country, language, or religion. ~ Amit Ray

Computing technology started out as number-crunching. ~ Ramez Naam

The sustainable success of digital transformation comes from a carefully planned organisational change management process that meets two key objectives, one being the company culture, and the other one is empowering its employees ~ Enamul Haque

The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today. ~ J. C. R. Licklider

The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

It's a world of multiple screens, smart displays, with tons of low-cost computing, with big sensors built into devices. At Google, we ask how to bring together something seamless and beautiful and intuitive across all these screens. ~ Sundar Pichai

By 2020, most home computers will have the computing power of a human brain. That doesn't mean that they are brains, but it means that in terms of raw processing, they can process bits as fast as a brain can. So the question is, how far behind that is the development of a machine that's as smart as we are? ~ Seth Shostak

GIS is being influenced by and integrating with all kinds of new innovations such as faster computing, big data, the cloud, smart devices, and distributed processing. ~ Jack Dangermond

Software unification. So that I no longer care what computing device I pick up, whether it's a laptop or desktop, whether it's one I own or one in a public place, whether it has a small screen or a large screen. ~ David Gelernter

In some far-off distant time, when the twentieth century history of primitive computing is just a murky memory, someone is likely to suppose that devices known as logic gates were named after the famous co-founder of Microsoft Corporation ~ Charles Petzold

We think computing ought to be like a telephone or a water tap or a light switch. ~ Scott McNealy

Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS. ~ Alan Kay

Our civilization is experiencing unprecedented changes across many realms, largely due to the rapid advancement of information technology. The ability to code and understand the power of computing is crucial to success in today's hyper-connected world. ~ Al Gore

The spirit of social computing is the concept of leaving value in your wake. ~ Bradley Horowitz

The most important application of quantum computing in the future is likely to be a computer simulation of quantum systems, because that's an application where we know for sure that quantum systems in general cannot be efficiently simulated on a classical computer. ~ David Deutsch

In 20 or 30 years, you'll be able to hold in your hand as much computing knowledge as exists now in the whole city, or even the whole world. ~ Douglas Engelbart

Cloud computing means you are doing your computing on somebody else's computer. Looking ahead a little, I firmly believe cloud - previously called grid computing - will become very widespread. It's much cheaper than buying your own computing infrastructure, or maybe you don't have the power to do what you want on your own computer. ~ Whitfield Diffie

The cloud services companies of all sizes; the cloud is for everyone. The cloud is a democracy. ~ Marc Benioff

Not fair? Oh, I'm sorry I get this lovely laptop computing device when all you get is the ability to walk, control your hands, and know you'll survive until your eighteenth birthday." Then the kid was going, "Uh, I didn't mean ... " But Tad wasn't done yet. While the whole class watched in horror, he put his hands through the metal support braces on the arms of his wheelchair and forced himself to stand up. Then he took a shaky little step to the side, gestured toward the chair, and said, "Why don't you take a turn with the laptop? You can even have my seat. ~ Jordan Sonnenblick

Simulating the behavior of 100 billion neurons of human brain is not feasible by classical computer but quantum machine learning promises to fulfill that requirement. ~ Amit Ray

I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces. ~ Daniel J. Bernstein

The human brain became large by natural selection (who knows why, but presumably for good cause). Yet surely most "things" now done by our brains, and essential both to our cultures and to our very survival, are epiphenomena of the computing power of this machine, not genetically grounded Darwinian entities created specifically by natural selection for their current function. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Computing shows up in many different ways. You have computing that you wear, computing that you carry. What you think of as the traditional PC market has a long tail of usage, particularly in the commercial world, but also in consumer. ~ Michael Dell

Nobody programmes the brain, yet it keeps learning. India shouldn't miss the emerging age of brain-inspired computing. ~ Kris Gopalakrishnan

In this new world, with smartphones and tablets and cloud computing, things are moving around fast. ~ Hector Ruiz

Personal computing today is a rich ecosystem encompassing massive PC-based data centers, notebook and Tablet PCs, handheld devices, and smart cell phones. It has expanded from the desktop and the data center to wherever people need it - at their desks, in a meeting, on the road or even in the air. ~ Bill Gates

In the underworld, reality itself has elastic properties and is capable of being stretched into different definitions
of the truth. ~ Roderick Vincent

Back in 1995, Bill Gates himself didn't understand that the internet was the direction computing was going. ~ John Podhoretz

The standard definition of AI is that which we don't understand. ~ Bill Joy

Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) is a new model of banking based on cloud computing structures of digital banking. ~ Chris Skinner