Computers

For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless, and then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a dangerously perfect match.
~ Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1999). Lost in Cyberland

Suddenly I was face to face with the flip side of Paradise.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr., The Dictionary, Ready at Hand (1996)

That's what I love about GUIs: They make simple tasks easier, and complex tasks impossible.
~ John William Chambless

Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.
~ William Orville Douglas, Points of Rebellion (1969). How America Views Dissent

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.
~ William Gaddis

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
~ Bill Gates

Anyone who spends their life on a computer is pretty unusual.
~ Bill Gates

Anytime we have new forms of communication, it changes behavior whether it is political or business or any type of behavior. Radio and TV did that. The PC will be classed as big or bigger an advancement in communications that those devices were.
~ Bill Gates

As a leader in the computing industry, Microsoft has a responsibility to help its customers address these concerns, so they no longer have to choose between security and usability. This is a long-term effort.
~ Bill Gates, Executive email message (23 January 2003). Security in a Connected World

Citizens are interested in more information if they can easily reach out and get it.
~ Bill Gates

Everyone who has been in this industry has had a chance to participate in something very exciting. It is kind of like early steam engines or factories or something. The timing was right for the people who got to do it.
~ Bill Gates

I believe OS/2 . . . to be the most important OS . . . of all time.
~ Bill Gates

I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
~ Bill Gates

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their use.
~ Bill Gates, Speech at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (24 February 2004).

I'd be happy if I could think that the role of the library was sustained and even enhanced in the age of the computer.
~ Bill Gates, in The New York Times (6 November 2002). Bill Gates Views What He's Sown in Libraries

I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
~ Bill Gates

If there's one cultural quality we have, it's that we always see ourselves as an underdog.
~ Bill Gates

In a sense this is the end of an era. Microsoft and the original PC rose to prominence based on the MS-DOS product. And even as Windows came along, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, underneath MS-DOS was running there. Windows simply sat on top of MS-DOS. Well, so today it really is actually the end of the MS-DOS era. It's also, we would say, the end of the Windows 95 era.
~ Bill Gates, Speech at New York City (25 October 2001). Windows XP Launch Remarks

In five years the cost of computation will really be effectively decreased. We'll be able to put on somebody's desk, for an incredibly low cost, a processor with far more capability than you could ever take advantage of.
~ Bill Gates, PC Magazine (Inaugural issue, Interview; 1 February 1982). The Man Behind The Machine?

In retrospect, committing to the graphics interface seems so obvious that now it's hard to keep a straight face.
~ Bill Gates

It's possible to do a much better machine . . . You could put a faster processor in. Intel's has the 8086. I think five years from now the amount of software and the quality of the software on this machine will be incredible. It will dwarf what is available on mainframes, minicomputers and other machines.
~ Bill Gates (speaking about the first IBM PC), PC Magazine (Inaugural issue, Interview; 1 February 1982). The Man Behind The Machine?

Many of our research projects will fail.
~ Bill Gates

Often you have to rely on intuition.
~ Bill Gates

Our vision of what's important is exactly the same today, bringing together the best systems and the best software to empower people with rich information solutions.
~ Bill Gates

Software, by being comprehensive, can save costs by avoiding add-on pieces of software. We can save money in terms of speed of development or by being able to run on less expensive hardware.
~ Bill Gates (asserting that Microsoft Windows had saved more money for its users than open-source systems), The Associated Press (14 November 2002). Microsoft Drowns Out Other Options

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering. When you finally get done and get to appreciate what you have done it is like a part of yourself that you've put together. I think a lot of the people here feel that way.
~ Bill Gates, PC Magazine (Inaugural issue, Interview; 1 February 1982). The Man Behind The Machine?

Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more "user-friendly." Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
~ Bill Gates

The digital decade is not just about any particular aspect of computing, taking enterprises, knowledge workers and homes and building standards that connect all of those together. The key piece in the center is trustworthy systems, systems that do what you expect on an extremely reliable basis. So in each of these areas we have new scenarios, new ways that people will be using their computers that they never did before.
~ Bill Gates, Keynote Remarks at COMDEX -- Fall 2001 (11 November 2001).

The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
~ Bill Gates, Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999).

The PC will continue to evolve. In fact, you'll think of it simply as a flat screen that will range from a wallet size device to a notebook, to a desktop, to a wall. . . . And those computers will be everywhere.
~ Bill Gates

There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.
~ Bill Gates, in FOCUS magazine (23 October 1995).

This means at least several years of confusion.
~ Bill Gates

Today, you always know whether you are on the Internet or on your PC's hard drive. Tomorrow, you will not care and may not even know.
~ Bill Gates

We also had the tragic events of September 11th, and I know for everyone that's caused us to step back, think about our priorities. It's a tragedy that affects us personally and affects our businesses. For the computer industry in particular, I think it highlights the importance of security, giving that far more importance than we've had in the past. We don't want our digital systems to have weaknesses that allow for tragedies, exploiting the weaknesses that are there. And so there's a renewed sense of focus on that.
~ Bill Gates, Keynote Remarks at COMDEX -- Fall 2001 (11 November 2001).

You know you have built an excellent digital nervous system when information flows through your organization as quickly and naturally as thought in a human being and when you can use technology to marshal and coordinate teams of people as quickly as you can focus an individual on an issue. It's business at the speed of thought.
~ Bill Gates, Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999).

What you create on a computer can be designed and printed out, even bound up in a way that can come close to what a professional publishing house might manage. Desktop publishing is a thriving industry.
~ William Germano, Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books (2001). What Do Publishers Do?

. . . feeling a wave of exhilaration as cyberspace shivered, blurred, gelled.
~ William Gibson, Neuromancer (July 1984).

I jack in and I'm not here. It's all the same.
~ William Gibson, Neuromancer (July 1984).

A computer that operates by light waves rather than electricity will be available in about 2015. All of the components for optical systems are in place: lasers for coding light waves with information and for reading the information, fiber optics for carrying light waves, and CDs for storing information in hard form. Optical systems will replace current computer technology within 20 years at the most.
~ William E. Halal, World Future Society Future Times (Summer 2000). Forecasts of Emerging Technologies

We will begin to reach the limits of our present computer paradigm in about five years. When that barrier is reached, optical computers will become the new paradigm, delivering limitless information at the speed of light. That's exciting.
~ William E. Halal, World Future Society Future Times (Summer 2000). Forecasts of Emerging Technologies

It's a problem because it was a willful misuse of government computer systems and done in a way to try to hide from system administrators. We have determined it does not involve the loss of classified information.
~ Bill Harlow

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 William Hawking

I think Unix is a great system -- especially for running data centers -- because it is very mature, very reliable, very scalable. But when I want to go out and populate small devices, I think Java.
~ Bill Joy, in Wired Magazine (August 1998). Creating One Huge Computer

In a world of millions of devices, what you want to be able to do is send new bits of code and have them interlink. Ideally, the code would have flexible linkage -- flexible linkage is, in fact, the hardest bit of the job. C and all the programs related to it don't solve the programming problems of this world. They did not anticipate a world of millions of devices.
~ Bill Joy, in Wired Magazine (August 1998). Creating One Huge Computer

Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac (and nobody cares about it).
~ Bill Joy, (21 June 1985).

The next step after cheap is free, and after free is disposable.
~ Bill Joy

The Open Source theorem says that if you give away source code, innovation will occur. Certainly, Unix was done this way. . . . However, the corollary states that the innovation will occur elsewhere. No matter how many people you hire. So the only way to get close to the state of the art is to give the people who are going to be doing the innovative things the means to do it. That's why we had built-in source code with Unix. Open source is tapping the energy that's out there.
~ Bill Joy, in Wired Magazine (August 1998). Creating One Huge Computer

Had there been a computer a hundred years ago, it would probably have predicted by now there would be so many horse-drawn vehicles it would be impossible to clear up all the manure.
~ K. William Kapp

For it is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
~ Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Television is like a really, really good screen saver.
~ Bill Machrone

The Web is a 4-year-old, endlessly yammering, "Look what I can do."
~ Bill Machrone

A public library does not acquire Internet terminals in order to create a public forum for Web publishers to express themselves, any more than it collects books in order to provide a public forum for the authors of books to speak.
~ William H. Rehnquist (majority opinion), United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (23 June 2003).

To the extent that libraries wish to offer unfiltered access, they are free to do so without federal assistance.
~ William H. Rehnquist (ruling that Children's Internet Protection Act did not violate the First Amendment; majority opinion), United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (23 June 2003).

Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
~ Maurice V. Wilkes, (1949).

It was not a project to build a computer only. It was a project to build a computer, to learn how to use it and then to solve some problems.
~ Maurice V. Wilkes

Anyone who gets online eventually has to ask themselves if it's enriching their lives or taking away from other things.
~ Gail Williams

People who love sports should have a place where they can get all they want. Of course we all could do with out the false rumors, but it really is harmless for the most part.
~ Jay Williams (on sports coverage on the Internet), NBA.com (February 2003). e-mailing with . . .

Computers, the Internet and the World Wide Web have changed our ways of living and working. Today information doubles every four years. To survive in this world and to be competitive, blind and visually impaired people must have access to this information.
~ John M. Williams, Speech at "2001: A Technology Odyssey" conference (3 August 2001). Finding New Markets for Products for Blind and Visually Impaired People

It gave us a huge edge over our competitors, and from that day on, it wasn't a matter of selling franchises. It was a matter of taking orders for them.
~ Kemmons Wilson (on the first computerized reservation system used at Holiday Inn), USA TODAY (23 May 2002). Come Inn off the highway

Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.
~ Kristian Wilson, (1989).

More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason -- including blind stupidity.
~ William Allan ("Bill") Wulf, in Proceedings of the 25th National ACM Conference (August 1972). A Case Against the GOTO