The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.
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It is not always possible to know what one has learned, or when the dawning will arrive. You will continue read more
It is not always possible to know what one has learned, or when the dawning will arrive. You will continue to shift, sift, to shake out and to double back. The synthesis that finally occurs can be in the most unexpected place and the most unexpected time. My charge ... is to be alert to the dawnings.
I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it. I never perfected an invention that read more
I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it. I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it. I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill. The dove is my emblem.
Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it. -Max Frisch.
Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it. -Max Frisch.
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black read more
I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake.
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
FORTRAN --'the infantile disorder'--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in read more
FORTRAN --'the infantile disorder'--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
PL/I --'the fatal disease'-- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.
