Quotes About Technology

Before the computer, the animals, mortal though not sentient, seemed our nearest neighbors in the known universe. Computers, with their interactivity, their psychology, with whatever fragments of intelligence they have, now bid for this place." While

Indeed, Cutler had found a calling in life. "What I really wanted to do was work on computers, not apply them to problems.

In a certain sense, choosing an operating system was similar to buying a car. Besides the purchase price, there was a cost of ownership. The size of an operating system largely determined the amount of memory required by the computer. Just as some cars guzzled gas, some operating systems consumed large amounts of memory.

Programming "was just the most bizarre situation, because you're used to doing something and thinking you've done it right," he later said. "But it isn't right. You just don't notice it isn't right. On a computer there is no consolation in discovering you're almost right. Almost means you're still just wrong." Even

He felt people at IBM worshiped hierarchies. Each employee worried about his little piece of turf and nothing else. Diamond still recalled with amazement the time an IBM programmer, hacking away at OS/2, watched the program crash to a halt. The guy studied his screen for a minute, then said, "Wow, what a nasty problem. Glad that isn't in my code." He restarted his PC and went back to work, never even reporting the bug. At

In 1951, Grace Murray Hopper, a mathematician with the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ordnance Naval Reserve, conceived of a program called a compiler, which translated a programmer's instructions into the strings of ones and zeroes, or machine language, that ultimately controlled the computer. In principle, compilers seemed just the thing to free programmers from the tyranny of hardware and the mind-numbing binary code. Hopper

They arose very quickly, became a profession very rapidly, and were all too soon infected with a certain amount of resistance to change. The very programmers whom I have heard almost castigate a customer because he would not change his system of doing business are the same people who at times walk into my office and say, "But we have always done it this way." It is for this reason that I now have a counterclockwise clock hanging in my office. In

Friendship," Marx said, "is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.

A programmer is a diviner of possible outcomes, and a seer of unseen worlds.

Unfortunately, the human brain is every bit as closed a system as a Mac.

A.J. has often reflected that, bit by bit, all the best things in the world are being carved away like fat from meat. First, it had been the record stores, and then the video stores, and then newspapers and magazines, and now even the big chain bookstores were disappearing everywhere you looked. From his point of view, the only thing worse than a world with big chain bookstores was a world with NO big chain bookstores.

Tamagotchis, the digital pet keychains, were everywhere that year. Marx had recently killed one that he had received as a holiday gift from a girlfriend. The girlfriend had taken it to be a sign of deeper flaws in Marx's character.

Computers are great for experimentation, but they're bad for deep thinking.

virtual worlds can be better than the actual world. They can be more moral, more just, more progressive, more empathetic, and more accommodating of difference. And if they can be, shouldn't they be?

The easiest way to get old is to be technologically behind

In 2005, people from the U.S. sent, on average, four hundred sixty text messages a year. Texts were treated and written more like telegrams than like conversations. The brevity lent these early texts an almost poetry.

Friendship," Marx said, "is kind of like having a Tamagotchi." Tamagotchis, the digital pet keychains, were everywhere that year.

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, by David Kushner;

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made, by Jason Schreier;

What, after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?

What I believe to my very core is that virtual worlds can be better than the actual world. They can be more moral, more just, more progressive, more empathetic, and more accommodating of difference. And if they can be, shouldn't they be?

What after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?

Friendship", Marx said, "is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.

Sam knew the foot was gone. He could see it was gone. He knew what he was experiencing was a basic error in programming, and he wished he could open up his brain and delete the bad code. Unfortunately, the human brain is every bit as closed a system as a Mac.