For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.
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A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and read more
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours read more
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 newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the read more
The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.
We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the read more
We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.
You know you've achieved perfection in design,
Not when you have nothing more to add,
But when you have read more
You know you've achieved perfection in design,
Not when you have nothing more to add,
But when you have nothing more to take away.
One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty. read more
One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty. - The Zykovs, 1914.
Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would like to remind you: read more
In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would like to remind you: when you link up to another computer, you're linking up to every computer that that computer has ever linked up to.
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
