Parker Conrad Quotes

Since, however, it is immaterial whether the work is done by assistants or a machine, I decided to build a machine equivalent to an array of about 200 separating funnels.

But how does it feel to plug into a system that's say, a million times as smart as a person.

Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection.

What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process.

It's hard not to love Roomba. Roomba had such an amazing impact on the field. When we launched, we asked people, 'Is it a robot?' and got an overwhelming no - 'robots' have arms and legs; they command data. There was a very strong perception that robots had to look like people.

If the clockwork universe equated the human body with the mechanics of the clock, the digital universe now equates human consciousness with the processing of the computer. We joke that things don't compute, that we need a reboot, or that our memory has been wiped.

To devise an information processing system capable of getting along on its own - it must handle its own problems of programming, bookkeeping, communication and coordination with its users. It must appear to its users as a single, integrated personality.

Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us.

Our lives sometimes depend on computers performing as predicted.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

With the advent of computing, human invention crossed a threshold into a world different from everything that came before. The computer is the universal machine almost by definition, machine-of-all-trades, capable of accomplishing or simulating just about any task that can be logically defined.

People are good at intuition, living our lives. What are computers good at? Memory.

Computing technology started out as number-crunching.

Something else has happened with computers.

Computing is becoming universal.

Technology has come such a long way and you could pretty much do everything what's called 'in the box'. It means that it never has to leave your computer.

The computer is a moron.

People don't understand computers. Computers are magical boxes that do things. People believe what computers tell them.

Computers do the calculating to allow people to transform the world.

Computers are very powerful tools, but in the simulated world of the computer, everything has to be calculated.

The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more., Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation.

The computer of today is really in its infancy.

The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.

The idea [of the Quantum Computer] is to create a machine that is as intelligence as humans, and probably much more so.

A computer is a great device because it enables you to do anything which is automatic, anything that you don't need your understanding for. Understanding is outside a computer. It doesn't understand.