Technology Quotes

Back up my hard drive? How do I put it in reverse?

Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?

The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.

The Internet? Is that thing still around?

Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.

We are Microsoft. Resistance Is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated.

Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it.

It's a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

The inside of a computer is as dumb as hell but it goes like mad!

I’ve noticed lately that the paranoid fear of computers becoming intelligent and taking over the world has almost entirely disappeared from the common culture. Near as I can tell, this coincides with the release of MS-DOS.

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.

Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity.

The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.

Ever notice how fast Windows runs ? — Neither did I.

I need to make an okay living. The people who work for us need to. But after you make a comfortable living, how much more do you need? It's like I make a joke about nerd values, because I'm very much in the rich nerd tradition. And you know, we say, like, hey, people pay us for this stuff, like programming. You know, what else do we need?

The term reboot comes from the middle age (before computers). Horses who stopped in mid-stride required a boot to the rear to start again. Thus the term to rear-boot, later abbreviated into reboot.

Never let a computer know you're in a hurry.

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.

We're responsible for the creation of the PC industry. The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software.. that's something we brought to computing. And so it's a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don't get in the way of that dream.

To understand a program you must become both the machine and the program.