Quotes from Danny Hillis

People are mostly focused on defending the computers on the Internet, and there's been surprisingly little attention to defending the Internet itself as a communications medium. [We] need to pay some more attention to that, because it's actually kind of fragile.

A human body is a conversation going on, both within the cells and between the cells, and they're telling each other to grow and to die; when you're sick, something's gone wrong with that conversation.

[Language is] really a pretty amazing invention if you think about it. Here I have a very complicated, messy, confused idea in my head. I'm sitting here making grunting sounds and hopefully constructing a similar messy, confused idea in your head that bears some analogy to it.

What we need is a plan B … independent of the Internet. [It] doesn't necessarily have to have the performance of the Internet, but the police department has to be able to call up the fire department.

If transportation technology was moving along as fast as microprocessor technology, then the day after tomorrow I would be able to get in a taxi cab and be in Tokyo in 30 seconds.

If transportation technology was moving along as fast as microprocessor technology, then the day after tomorrow I would be able to get in a taxi cab and be in Tokyo in 30 seconds.

We're at a point in time which is analogous to when single-celled organisms were turning into multi-celled organisms. So we're the amoebas.

An attitude of only taking what you need was built into the protocols of the Internet itself.

The computers are in control. We just live in their world.

Design: holding conflicting ideas in your head without difficulty