Alan Kay Quotes

If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.

While technology is important, it's what we do with it that truly matters.

We need to make sure that we are using technology, and technology is not using us.

Customers are still setting the technology agenda. Not just you, our customers, but your customers as well. What more and more are telling you is what kind of services they need, and how and when they want those services delivered to them. And in fact, that is just the beginning.

It's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate.

We not only need to train people, we also need to develop deflection technologies.

Truth is, I wouldn't know a gigabyte from a snakebite.

You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, 'Here are three things.' You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life.

I recognize the need for technology that enriches life while preserving our natural environment. My goal is to stimulate productivity, but use technology to redeem, not to destroy our environment.

If you find yourself concentrating on the technology rather than the sociology, you're like the vaudeville character who loses his keys on a dark street and looks for them on the adjacent street because, as he explains, "The light is better there."

The gap between brute power and human need continues to grow, as the power fattens on the same faulty technology that intensifies the need.

And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don't have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?

If something doesn't work exactly right, or maybe needs some special treatment, you don't just throw it away. Everything can't be fully operational all the time. Sometimes, we need to have the patience to give something the little nudge it needs.

More than machinery, we need humanity.

By the year 2000, all Americans must be able to set the clocks on their VCRs.

Part of why history is so important in my life is because it brings you an awareness that everything isn't new. It gives context to what's happening right now. History is cyclical but circumstances and technology change. So when social justice topics come up, they're not new. They're just being covered more. We have more ways to record it now.

I don't believe [Africa] is ready to shift - and she needs to shift. So she needs to get the technology and she can only get that technology from the developed world.

One of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.

If I need romance, that's what Netflix is for.

Not like I need an excuse to enjoy a Moscow mule, but this tray and six-mug set, handmade in Mexico with hammered recycled copper, makes cocktail hour extra special.

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

Women don't want equal treatment, they couldn't handle it if they got it. It's a tough world out there. What a lot of women are actually looking for is special treatment. What women need to realise is that they have to toughen up, we can't ask for equal pay, you have to be paid on performance and the results you deliver.

The phantasmagoria, the actual experience that we try to understand and organize through narrative, varies from place to place. No single narrative serves the needs of everyone everywhere.

When you're addicted to heroin, there is only one thing you can do - go off heroin. But we're not going to throw away these phones, we're not going to throw away our technology.

I did not say history was bunk. It was bunk to me . . I did not need it very bad.