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On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. Charles Babbage
But the main reason why computers matter to you and me and our future is because they have perfect memories. They never forget anything they’re told. James Burke, Connections s1e5: Wheel of Fortune, BBC 1978
Where a calculator like the ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1½ tons. Andrew Hamilton, Brains that Click, 1949
The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard Loom weaves flowers and leaves. Ada Lovelace, English mathematician, re Babbage’s mechanical computer
If you don’t know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker 1986 p50
You cannot have complexity to build a computer, to build a second-life software to run us, unless the creatures that built that computer evolved ... Sooner or later regresses of that kind have to be terminated. You cannot suddenly invent complexity and intelligence. The only way to do it is to start from primeval simplify and work up gradually. Professor Richard Dawkins, American Atheists Conference 2009
The Simulation Theory: for all we know every one of our perceived realities is simply fed to us by some all-powerful super-computer. Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design: The Meaning of Life, Discovery 2012
There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition. Stephen Hawking
I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories. Stephen Hawking
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 Mission Control was not as high-tech as it looked ... All the screens were linked to Mission Control’s mainframe computers. Despite filling a whole floor of the building, compared to modern computers of today, their total processing power was minute. First on the Moon: The Untold Story, Discovery 2005
The computer in the space-craft was maybe somewhere between a digital watch and a cell-phone. I think closer to the watch. Jack Garman, Apollo 11 computer engineer
What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dreamworld built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this [holds battery]. The Matrix 1999 starring Keanu Reeves & Laurence Fishburne & Carrie-Anne Moss & Hugo Weaving & Joe Pantoliano & Gloria Foster & Marcus Chong & Julian Arahanga & Matt Doran & Belinda McClory et al, directors Andy & Lana Wachowski, Morpheus
This is the first self-replicating species that we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer. Dr Craig Venter
They can simulate evolution: more precisely, computers can use the principles of evolution to shape and refine their own programs, in the same way the natural world uses evolution to shape and refine living organisms. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, The Secret Life of Chaos BBC 2010
Alan Turing was the first person to conceive of the modern computer. Order and Disorder with Jim Al-Khalili II: The Story of Information, BBC 2012
The runner’s name was Alan Turing, at the time a fellow of Cambridge University. The problem he was wondering about concerned the limits of mathematics itself. He imagined a machine that carried a program in its memory, a device that could solve any problem that could be described mathematically. The idea became known as a Universal Turing Machine, or universal computer. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World VI: Robots, BBC 2019
The world we live in can seem pretty illogical ... Computer sciences tend to think that logic is the bees’ knees. Professor David Cliff, The Joy of Logic, BBC 2013
Turing’s universal machine is what we today call the computer. ibid.
This is the information age. And the computer is the tool of the information age. Bill Gates, interview Horizon: The Electronic Frontier, BBC 1993
Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other. 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 user. Bill Gates
Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back. Bill Gates
The number of bits to which we have access has grown dramatically. Computers can now store and process enormous amounts of information extremely rapidly. In our time a revolution has begun. A revolution perhaps as significant as the evolution of DNA and nervous systems and the invention of writing. Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan, Cosmos: The Persistence of Memory, PBS 1980
It turns out that people overwhelmingly are not that interested in communicating with information, people are interested in communicating with each other. Howard Rheingold, author The Virtual Community, interview Horizon: The Electronic Frontier, 1993
Perhaps this was the greatest genius of the cyber jihadis: the monopoly they clinched on information. They realized how helplessly addicted the population had become to knowing in this information age. So what if news was tainted or unreliable? – people needed their daily fix. Manil Suri, The City of Devi
This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt bulb to run it and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now? Steve Jobs
It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. Steve Jobs, launch of ipad2
We were able to change the rules of the game. Steve Jobs
In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness. Marshall McLuhan
One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with. Marshall McLuhan