Control over computing belongs with users.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
One of the most feared expressions in modern times is The computer is down
Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.
I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer.
The word user is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot.
The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.
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.
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
Silicon Valley is like a person running around in front of a steamroller. You can outrun the steamroller on any given day. But if you ever sit down you get squashed.
There is never finality in the display terminal's screen, but an irresponsible whimsicality, as words, sentences, and paragraphs are negated at the touch of a key. The significance of the past, as expressed in the manuscript by a deleted word or an inserted correction, is annulled in idle gusts of electronic massacre.
It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.
A computer won't clean up the errors in your manual of procedures.
The workers and professionals of the world will soon be divided into two distinct groups. Those who will control computers and those who will be controlled by computers. It would be best for you to be in the former group.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer. Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters.
I really don't care that I don't have what's current because whatever is at the moment, it will be infinitely better in a few months and even better months later.
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.
Computers WORK, people THINK.
Man is a slow, sloppy and brilliant thinker; the machine is fast, accurate and stupid.
Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
I see no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history -- with the possible exceptions of hand guns and tequila.
There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.
I have always wished for a computer that would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish came true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.
If you don't know how to do something, you don't know how to do it with a computer.
Computers in the future will weigh no more than 1.5 tons. [Quoted in Popular Mechanics 1950]
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
— Weisert