Quotes About Technology

Neal Stephenson

In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not to a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.

The average buyer of an OS is not really paying for, and is not especially interested in, the low-level code that allocates memory or writes bytes onto the disk. What we're really buying is a system of metaphors. And--much more important--what we're buying into is the underlying assumption that metaphors are a good way to deal with the world.

They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The

Randy used to be fascinated by software, but now he isn't. It's hard enough to find human beings who are interesting.

When he came to his senses, he was aware that a large number of telephones were singing their little electronic songs. Including his. The birth cry of a new age.

Neal Stephenson

Any number that can be created by fetishistically multiplying 2s by each other, and subtracting the occasional 1, will be instantly recognizable to a hacker.

At one point, some years previously, one of the engineers at Corporation 9592—a classic liberal-arts-major-turned-coder-so-he-could-make-a-decent-living—had identified this as the Hand met Spiegelende Bol Problem

Information Theory would inform a mechanical calculator in much the same way as, say, fluid dynamics would inform the hull of a ship.

the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other, and she wants no such distortion in her relationships.

summary to me. I thought you couldn't summarize.

Though some efforts had been made to camouflage their essential nature, they were really just guns for shooting humans, albeit humans strapped into comfortable, pressurized bullets.

A computer is a human being.

Neal Stephenson

Izzy estaba llena de gente que se orientaba hacia el extremo Asperger del espectro social y la mejor forma de hacerla hablar era preguntarle por algún detalle técnico.

Think of a baseball card, which carries a picture, some text, and some numerical data. A baseball hypercard could contain a highlight film of the player in action, shown in perfect high-def television; a complete biography, read by the player himself, in stereo digital sound; and a complete statistical database along with specialized software to help you look up the numbers you want.

hydrological warfare.

The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream.

The Rat Thing has them now," Hiro says.

He can control these people by grafting radio receivers into their skulls, broadcasting instructions—me—directly into their brainstems.

We are technocrats. We make decisions like engineers. Which doesn't always line up with what people imagine they want.

None of them have cars, but when they do, they are three-ton hand-built beasts.

What is BFR?" asked Pete Starling. For the graph's vertical scale was labeled thus. "Bolide Fragmentation Rate