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It would be very discouraging if somewhere down the line you could ask a computer if the Riemann hypothesis is correct and it said, "Yes, it is true, but you won't be able to understand the proof."
RONALD GRAHAM, Scientific American, Oct. 1993
What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
STEVE JOBS, Memory and Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress
The similarities between humans and computers are more numerous than the differences.
P. A. SCOTT, Global Ergonomics
The computer has evolved into a partner, a tool, and an environment--not just in science fiction, but in the public consciousness as well. Computers are no longer malevolent iron brains that manufacture tyrannical and oppressive answers; they are not a way to think, they are a place from which to think. The computer is an environment in which answers can be sought, created, manipulated and developed.
DAVID GERROLD, InfoWorld, Jul. 5, 1982
That computers are qualitative, representation-processors, making them primarily art tools, is wonderful. That we emasculate and objectify them before we've even begun is sad indeed.
STUART MEALING, Computers and Art
Computers are machines and thus not subject to the biases and prejudices that distort human information processing and decision making--computers are objective in some absolute sense. In addition, computers are driven by purely logical mechanisms that are open to inspection; thus, computer-generated results must be totally rational and logical--they must be the "truth." Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?), the most utter rubbish and prejudice-saturated nonsense is as easily generated from logical mechanisms as by any other means. The use of a logical basis in no way guarantees correct and true conclusions. In fact, quite the contrary is the case. Simple classical logic is singularly ineffective in the empirical world of incomplete and poor quality information.... Thus, computers are, in general, no more infallible than you, or I, or the persons who programmed them.
DEREK PARTRIDGE, Artificial Intelligence and Business Management
My boyfriend got me a computer three years ago. I'll admit it does make things a lot easier. When I was working on a typewriter and I whited out a line, often I would choose a word to go in the space just because it fit. Now I don't have to do that.
DAVID SEDARIS, Time Magazine, Jun. 2004
I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
MACKEY MILLER, Mouse Attack 5!!!
Computers do what they are told. They slavishly obey any instructions given in their own programming language. This is how they do useful things like word processing and spreadsheet calculations. But, as in inevitable by-product, they are equally robotic in obeying bad instructions. They have no way of telling whether an instruction will have a good effect or a bad. They simply obey, as soldiers are supposed to do. It is there unquestioning obedience that makes computers useful, and exactly the same thing makes them inescapably vulnerable to infection by software viruses and worms. A maliciously designed program that says, "Copy me and send me to every address that you find on this hard disk" will simply be obeyed, and then obeyed again by other computers down the line to which it is sent, in exponential expansion. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to design a computer which is usefully obedient and at the same time immune to infection.
RICHARD DAWKINS, The God Delusion
Sometimes I get so frustrated with my computer, I feel more like booting it OUT instead of booting it UP!
TOM WILSON, Ziggy, Jan. 3, 1998
I think computer viruses should count as life ... I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
STEPHEN HAWKING, The Daily News, Aug. 4, 1994
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