Last Modified: 2012-10-04
Sensation is unorganized stimulus, perception is organized sensation, conception is organized perception, science is organized knowledge, wisdom is organized life: each is a greater degree of order, and sequence, and unity. Whence this order, this sequence, this unity? Not from the things themselves; for they are known to us only by sensations that come through a thousand channels at once in disorderly multitude; it is our purpose that put order and sequence and unity upon this importunate lawlessness.
[Will Durant]
If I'd listened to customers, I'd have given them a faster horse.
[Henry Ford]
[Henry Ford]
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
[Mark Twain]
[Mark Twain]
My topic is the shift from 'architect' to 'gardener', where 'architect' stands for 'someone who carries a dull picture of the work before it is made', to 'gardener' standing for 'someone who plants seeds and waits to see exactly what will come up'. I will argue that today's composers are more frequently 'gardeners' than 'architects' and, further, that the 'composer as architect' metaphor was a transitory historical blip.
[Brian Eno]
[Brian Eno]
Computer Science is to coding what biology is to gardening.
[Raphael Heufner]
[Raphael Heufner]
The whole world is pretending the breakthrough is in technology. The bottleneck is really in art.
[Penn Jillette]
[Penn Jillette]
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.
[Steve Jobs], Wired 1996
[Steve Jobs], Wired 1996
A message to mapmakers: highways are not painted red, rivers don't have county lines running down the middle, and you can't see contour lines on a mountain
[Bill Kent], Data And Reality
[Bill Kent], Data And Reality
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft - and the only one that can be mass-produced using unskilled labour.
[Wernher von Braun]
[Wernher von Braun]
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
[Antoine de Saint Exupery]
[Antoine de Saint Exupery]
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away.
[Antoine de Saint Exupery]
[Antoine de Saint Exupery]
There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
[C.A.R. Hoare]
[C.A.R. Hoare]
(Compared to software, ) The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and self-renewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built.
[Fredirick Brooks], "The Mythical Man Month"
[Fredirick Brooks], "The Mythical Man Month"
Software Development Explained
Evolution
Toll Gate Design
Do mechanical computers dream of steampunk sheep?
[Keith Barrow]
[Keith Barrow]
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
[Pablo Picaso]
[Pablo Picaso]
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
[Isaac Asimov]
[Isaac Asimov]
The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.
[Ted Nelson]
[Ted Nelson]