American - | -
With all the attention given to the personal computer, it's hard to remember that other companion machine in the room - the printer.
Ellen Ullman
RememberAttentionPersonalHard
Each new tool we create ends an old relationship with the world and starts a new one. And we're changed by that relationship, inevitably. It changes the way we live, changes our patterns, changes our social organization.
LiveRelationshipOrganizationWorld
Computer programming has always been a self-taught, maverick occupation.
AlwaysProgrammingBeenComputer
With every advance, you have to look over your shoulder and know what you're giving up - look over your shoulder and look at what falls away.
GivingYouLookGiving UpKnowOver
Our Constitution is designed to change very slowly. It's a feature, not a bug.
ChangeConstitutionBugSlowlyOur
Truly new inventions take time to play out.
TimePlayNewOutInventionsTake
If you've ever watched someone who is a mother talk on the phone, feed the dog, bounce the baby, it's just astounding to see someone manage, more or less well, to do all those things. But on a computer, multitasking is really binary. The task is either in the foreground, or it's not.
DogMotherBabySomeoneYouPhone
People talk about computer programmers as if computers are our whole lives. That's simply not true.
PeopleComputersTrueTalkWhole
UNIX always presumes you know what you're doing. You're the human being, after all, and it is a mere operating system.
DoingYouKnowHumanAlwaysSystem
Multitasking, throughput, efficiency - these are excellent machine concepts, useful in the design of computer systems. But are they principles that nurture human thought and imagination?
ImaginationThoughtDesignEfficiency
After we have put our intimate secrets and credit card numbers online, what can prevent us from putting our elections there as well?
CreditSecretsNumbersCredit Card
I like the little semi-competencies of human beings, I realize. Governance, after all, is a messy business, a world of demi-solutions and compromise, where ideals are tarnished regularly.
BusinessWorldCompromiseMessy
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Ellen Ullman quotes