Clifford Stoll
From Wikiquote
Clifford Stoll, Astro-physicist, Author
- I love computers and I use them all the time. I've got a half-dozen computers in my house. But this cult of computing gives me the heebie-jeebies, the sense that if you don't have an electronic-mail address, if you don't have your own customized homepage on the World Wide Web, if you don't have your own domain name online, then you're being left behind, that progress is going on without you. Human kindness, warmth, interaction, friendship, and family are far more important than anything that can come across my cathode-ray tube. While I admire the insights of many of the people in the world of computing, I get this cold feeling that I speak a different language.
- Most learning isn't fun. Learning takes work. Discipline. Commitment, from both teacher and student. Responsibility.
- Many subjects aren't fun. I wonder how the fun-to-learn teacher handles the Holocaust, Rape of Nanking, or American slavery... Show me the computer program that encourages quiet reflection.
- Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours later your fingers are yellow and you're no longer hungry, but you haven't been nourished.
- The authority of the calculator dulls our critical sense... how do you grade a student who says that two-thirds times three is 1.9999999?
- The Internet is a telephone system that's gotten uppity.
- Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.
- With a computer, you're interacting with something, not someone.
- Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?
- Minds think with ideas, not information. No amount of data, bandwidth, or processing power can substitute for inspired thought.
- I wish that we lived in a golden age, where ethical behavior was assumed; where technically competent programmers respected the privacy of others; where we didn't need locks on our computers.
- If you want to know what the future will be like, don't ask scientists or technologists or physicists. Don't ask someone who's writing code. Ask a kindergarten teacher. And don't just any kindergarten teachers, ask an experienced one. They're the ones who know what society is going to be like in another generation.
