Brian Kernighan 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.

I am not a Luddite. I am suspicious of technology. I am perfectly aware of its benefits, but I also try to pay attention to some of the negative effects.

I guess I lean toward being an optimist, as far as improving tech being good for people, but that's not to say there are not potential downsides, and you have to stay aware of those downsides.

We wring our hands over the miscarriages of technology and take its benefactions for granted

With any advent in technology, any technological innovation, there is the good and the bad.

Technology is not good, it's neutral.

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.

For better or worse, that is true with any new innovation, certainly any new technological innovation. There's many good things that come out of it, but also some bad things. All you can do is try to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff.

I always try to find something I like about the bad guys and then try to find the mistakes and the flaws in the good guys.

I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology. A new technology helps to fuel the economy, and any discussion of slowing its growth has to take account of economic consequences. However, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology.

I have very complex and complicated ideas about technology. It's such a prominent way that we communicate with each other. In ways, I think it's really positive, and in ways, I think it's really negative.

What I'm trying to do is to at least raise a flag to the blinding light of technology.

I think it's important for all culturally literate people to understand the technological substrate of new developments.

The good news is, being a digital citizen comes naturally to many of us once we get the opportunity - human beings have been taking things apart and putting them back together throughout history.

When it is about technology, there is this tendency to just reject all criticism as being anti-technological and anti-modern. I think this is very unhealthy.

Technology is an interesting subject, people thinking: how much good, and how much bad, does it inherently carry?

Technology is a wonderful tool, but also if used incorrectly a horrible tool. We're fascinated by all aspects of it, whatever makes our human lives easier on the planet, but eventually there will have to be some sort of merger. The fascination isn't going to die down.

We cannot blindly embrace the benefits of technology.

I used to have the very standard worldview. I can easily identify with people who see computers getting faster and smarter, and technology getting more and more beneficial, without seeing the other side.

There are dangers, but only dangers if people don't understand where technology is taking us.

One day we're going to look back, and whatever this era will get called, it's going to put a premium on math and science.

We are a dreadful species indeed, and deserve whatever it is our techno-baubles do to us.

I'm definitely a techno-optimist. I think we can do amazing things. But in my experience, if a thing has great potential, there is also a risk of great downsides, so to speak. Coming from a truly, really enthusiastic 'wow decade,' we are now moving into waters where we are somewhat more cautious.

I don't know how to write a novel in the world of cellphones. I don't know how to write a novel in the world of Google, in which all factual information is available to all characters. So I have to stand on my head to contrive a plot in which the characters lose their cellphone and are separated from technology.

We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot undo the impact of technology. Nor would we want to.