|
53fee52
|
Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting machinery work again.
|
|
humour
idiots
computers
hacker-folklore
it
|
Charles Stross |
|
474864a
|
"Now, 75 years [after ], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
|
|
reading
vacuity
modern-life
superficiality
critical-thinking
computers
communication
|
Harper Lee |
|
0434133
|
Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.
|
|
robots
computers
diversity
|
Arthur C. Clarke |
|
2604d4f
|
"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?" "I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
|
|
humor
computers
meaning-of-life
|
Douglas Adams |
|
3051734
|
Social capital may turn out to be a prerequisite for, rather than a consequence of, effective computer-mediated communication.
|
|
computers
internet
technology
|
Robert D. Putnam |
|
671f8f2
|
... we have created a man with not one brain but two. ... This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. ... The patient's biological brain is the peripheral terminal -- the only peripheral terminal -- for the new computer. ... And therefore the patient's biological brain, indeed his whole body, has become a terminal for the new computer. We have created a man who is one single, large, complex computer terminal. The patient is a read-out device for the new computer, and is helpless to control the readout as a TV screen is helpless to control the information presented on it.
|
|
computers
science-fiction
|
Michael Crichton |
|
9b23b2f
|
We conquer the Independence Day aliens by having a Macintosh laptop computer upload a software virus to the mothership (which happens to be one-fifth the mass of the Moon), thus disarming its protective force field. I don't know about you, but back in 1996 I had trouble just uploading files to other computers within my own department, especially when the operating systems were different. There is only one solution: the entire defense system for the alien mothership must have been powered by the same release of Apple Computer's system software as the laptop computer that delivered the virus.
|
|
funny
software
apple
computers
space
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
|
e1555b1
|
What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!
|
|
humour
funny
humor
umbrellas
lightning
computers
terrorism
|
Cory Doctorow |
|
f4a03ac
|
For most digital-age writers, writing rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste, and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucketloads of crap. Our analog ancestors had to polish every line mentally before hammering it out mechanically. Rewrites cost them months, meters of ink ribbon, and pints of Tippex. Poor sods.
|
|
writing
word-processors
computers
typewriters
writers
technology
|
David Mitchell |
|
9d9fb9a
|
"If patterns of ones and zeroes were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long strings of ones and zeroes, then what kind of creature could be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?"
|
|
science
computers
science-fiction
|
Thomas Pynchon |
|
02ae95f
|
The chip that functions abnormally will be desoldered, as they say.
|
|
humor
androids
chip
hammer
soldering
nail
computer
robots
computers
|
Charles Stross |
|
e49dee0
|
I wonder who had the first computer dream, where, and when? I wonder if computers ever dream of humans.
|
|
dreams
computers
technology
|
David Mitchell |
|
77e1da9
|
Abe said something interesting. He said that because everyone's so poor these days, the '90s will be a decade with no architectural legacy or style- everyone's too poor to put up new buildings. He said that code is the architecture of the '90s.
|
|
architecture
computers
nerds
|
Douglas Coupland |
|
f1eda4e
|
Helpfiles are traditionally outnumbered by no-help files, which superficially resemble a helpfile in form but not in content because they don't actually tell you anything you don't already know, or they answer every question except the one you're asking, or you open them and a giant animated paper clip leaps out and cheerfully asks where you want to go today. And wikis are worse.
|
|
computers
it
help
|
Charles Stross Cory Doctorow |
|
60f2089
|
"Face-book has all the social graces of a nose-picking, hyperactive six-year-old, standing at the threshold of your attention and chanting, "I know something, I know something, I know something, won't tell you what it is!"
|
|
facebook
social-networking
computers
|
Cory Doctorow |
|
c9141ab
|
Most of Csongor's time in T'Rain had been spent blundering about in a state of hapless newbie confusion. Only his long experience as a system administrator, struggling with Byzantine software installations, had prevented hum from plummeting into despair and simply giving up. Not that any of the sysadmin's knowledge and skills were applicable here. The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he'd be able to break through in the end.
|
|
persistence
sysadmins
computers
|
Neal Stephenson |
|
eb7803b
|
When I was an activist in the 1980s, ninety-eight percent of my time was spent stuffing envelopes and writing addresses on them. The remaining two percent was the time we spent figuring out what to put in the envelopes. Today, we get those envelopes and stamps and address books for free. This is so fantastically, hugely different and weird that we haven't even begun to feel the first tendrils of it.
|
|
history
politics
computers
|
Cory Doctorow |
|
4fcf89e
|
All the computers in the world are on a network. They're linked by our cuffs. But I'm a computer. Jack's a computer--Akilah--PA Young--all the cy-clones. We're all computers. You know the great thing about computers? They can be hacked.
|
|
computers
hacking
|
Beth Revis |
|
8a94e90
|
I'm proud of it. Apart from marking the first occasion when I used my talent on behalf of other people without being asked and without caring whether I was rewarded--which was a major breakthrough in itself--the job was a pure masterpiece. Working on it, I realized in my guts how an artist or an author can get high on the creative act. The poker who wrote Precipice's original tapeworm was pretty good, but you could theoretically have killed it without shutting down the net--that is, at the cost of losing thirty or forty billion bits of data. Which I gather they were just about prepared to do when I showed up. But mine...Ho, no! That, I cross my heart, cannot be killed without DISMANTLING the net.
|
|
computers
first-hacktivist
hacker-folklore
hackers
hacking
hacktivism
|
John Brunner |
|
257b37a
|
Was [Steve Jobs] smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical. [...] Like a pathfinder, he could absorb information, sniff the winds, and sense what lay ahead. Steve Jobs thus became the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now. History will place him in the pantheon right next to Edison and Ford. More than anyone else of his time, he made products that were completely innovative, combining the power of poetry and processors. With a ferocity that could make working with him as unsettling as it was inspiring, he also built the world's most creative company. And he was able to infuse into its DNA the design sensibilities, perfectionism, and imagination that make it likely to be, even decades from now, the company that thrives best at the intersection of artistry and technology.
|
|
inspirational
innovator
brilliant
apple
computers
innovation
genius
technology
|
Walter Isaacson |
|
329d336
|
Hollywood movies, however, have brainwashed us into thinking that we can defeat the alien invaders if they are a few decades or centuries ahead of us in technology. Hollywood assumes that we can win by using some primitive, clever trick. In Independence Day, all we have to do is inject a simple computer virus into their operating system to bring them to their knees, as if the aliens use Microsoft Windows.
|
|
future
computers
science-fiction
movies
technology
|
Michio Kaku |