Hal Abelson Quotes

The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think.

When Colin Powell showed up as Secretary of State in 2001, most State Department employees still didn't even have computers on their desks. When I got there they were not mostly permitted to have handheld devices. I mean, so you're thinking how do we operate in this new environment dominated by technology, globalizing forces? We have to change, and I can't expect people to change if I don't try to model it and lead it.

I grew up before computers. Computers are changing things, not all for the good.

I am from the age of magazines, so the Internet is terrifying to me. But I am learning.

We have seven pillars of development. India has a cutting edge information technology industry. We are setting up a technology park. We would like to see technology penetration iin education. Besides, we would like to see cooperation in industries like fashion, filmmaking, ship-building, education, health and energy.

We've seen the power of the PC, and we've seen that it's unstoppable.

But computers have changed the world for everyone, so there will be some way of working it out.

Technology is changing so fast that knowledge about specifics can quickly become obsolete. That's why so much of what technicians learn is on the job.

One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.

This is a very different world. Much of it is new. What has happened is that information technology has politicized the world…It’s a world where most of the big problems spill over national boundaries.

This is … a time when there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the last generation. Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever

As the rate of technological change in computing slows, the number of jobs for IT specialists will decelerate, then actually turn down; ten years from now, the phrase information economy will sound silly.

The best opportunity for return on investment is in the information revolution.

I am worried about development in the field of information technology, communication, etc. So you cannot say that I have become inactive.

The Industrial Revolution was about making physical things. Many of the manufactured goods that were once tangible objects have now been reduced to bits and bytes of data.

Technology is probably the single biggest driver of productivity gains for the developed countries. For example, I think it's much more important than free trade.

Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.

It's pretty amazing to go from a world where computers were unheard of and very complex to where they're a tool of everyday life.

Somebody is going to find a way digitally that is just as innovative. In the end, the tools can change, but there is always someone who can think of something cool to do.

The late 90s were crazy science-fictional if you were inside the superheated steam bubble of the dot-com 1.0 industry.

Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.

Computer science needs to be part of the core curriculum - like algebra, biology, physics, or chemistry. We need all schools to teach it, not just 10%.

I didn't even have a computer until like 10 years ago. I was still using a typewriter until 2002.

Now, the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments. And that is, when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use.

A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.