Danny Hillis Quotes

I can't say I'm particularly happy about all the spam and the viruses and the equivalent that we see on the Net, but I think technology can deal with many of the problems that we're now seeing, whether it's filtering or whatever, and laws may help a lot.

We face paired dangers. The first is that our networks are successfully attacked. The second is that our fear of attack will cause us to destroy what makes the Internet special.

I've spent my life defending the Net, and I do feel that if we don't fight online crime, we are running a risk of losing it all.

People are mostly focused on defending the computers on the Internet, and there's been surprisingly little attention to defending the Internet itself as a communications medium.

Defending ourselves from internet-based attacks, internet-originated attacks, is much, much more important than our ability to launch attacks against similar targets in foreign countries.

One of the things that I intend to devote a lot of time to in the coming years is continuing to try to move people's hearts and minds with humor, with stories, with anecdotes, with facts and information.

I still believe in the power of the word, that words inspire.

Our biggest threat is not an asteroid about to crash into us, something we can do nothing about. Instead, all the major threats facing us today are problems entirely of our own making. And since we made the problems, we can also solve the problems.

I don't want anyone hacking us. And I'm not only talking about countries. I'm talking about anyone, period.

Preaching for life changes requires far less information and more application. Less explanation and more inspiration.

You can never underestimate the amount of energy and frequency you must give to vision casting. You can never underestimate it.

I would rather say whoa to a leader than gittie up.

Bob Mueller for the FBI, myself, met with a particular group of executives that have major roles in the so-called ISPs, the Internet service providers, what they could possibly do. We have met with leaders in private industry in terms of the core critical infrastructure of the country as to what they can possibly do with cyber-attacks.

The parents in the room know that texting is actually the best way to communicate with your kids. It might be the only way to communicate with your kids.

The Harvard Business Review recently had an article called 'The Human Moment,' about how to make real contact with a person at work: ... The fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry, close your laptop, end your daydream and pay full attention to the person.

We all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits.

Real leaders like Lee Iacocca see vast possibilities and sell their dreams to their companies, their employees, their funding sources, their government and their buying public.

Words are the wings of actions.

[Computer viruses] switch from one country to another, from one jurisdiction to another - moving around the world, using the fact that we don't have the capability to globally police operations like this. So the Internet is as if someone [had] given free plane tickets to all the online criminals of the world.

Efforts to protect critical computer networks have unfortunately not kept pace with the march of technology.

Chaos is hard to create, even on the Internet. Here's an example. Go to Amazon.com. Buy a book without using SSL. Watch the total lack of chaos.

It's much easier, I think, to protect communications while they're in transit at least, than it is to enforce legislation in every country in the world to say that you can't do this.

Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us ... Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.

Great leaders must have two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate that vision clearly.

By leaning on companies, by leaning on infrastructure providers, by leaning on researchers, graduate students, post-docs, even undergrads, to look at the challenges having an untrusted internet, where we have to put our communications on wires that are owned by a phone company that we can't trust, that's working in collaboration with a government that we can't trust, in areas around the world, we can restructure that communications fabric in a way that it's encrypted.