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" The web is just another stunning point in the two-hundred-thousand-year history of human beings on earth. The taming of fire; the discovery of penicillin; the publication of 'Jane Eyre' - add anything you like. "

Ellen Ullman

Discovery

History

Fire

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" I feel the best villains are the ones you have feelings for. "

" So many people for so many years have promoted technology as the answer to everything. The economy wasn't growing: technology. Poor people: technology. Illness: technology. As if, somehow, technology in and of itself would be a solution. Yet machine values are not always human values. "

" There's some intimacy in reading, some thoughtfulness that doesn't exist in machine experiences. "

" I fear for the world the Internet is creating. "

" Writing is a very isolating occupation. "

" Introduced in the 1960s, multitasking is an engineering strategy for making computers more efficient. Human beings are the slowest elements in a system. "

" It is deep in our nature to make tools. "

" With code, what it means is what it does. It doesn't express, not really. It's a very bounded conversation. And writing is not bounded. That's what's hard about it. "

" When knowledge passes into code, it changes state; like water turned to ice, it becomes a new thing, with new properties. We use it, but in a human sense, we no longer know it. "

" I hate the new word processors that want to tell you, as you're typing, that you made a mistake. I have to turn off all that crap. It's like, shut up - I'm thinking now. I will worry about that sort of error later. I'm a human being. I can still read this, even though it's wrong. You stupid machine, the fact that you can't is irrelevant to me. "

" After we have put our intimate secrets and credit card numbers online, what can prevent us from putting our elections there as well? "

" Even simple fixes can bring the whole system down. "

" I was a girl who came into the clubhouse, into the treehouse, with the sign on the door saying, 'No girls allowed,' and the reception was not always a good one. "

" 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. "

" I like mysteries. "

Ellen Ullman

Mysteries

" Abhorring error is not necessarily positive. "

" I think technical people now should learn literature, because literature teaches you a great deal about how - the depths and variety of human imagination. "

" Truly new inventions take time to play out. "

" Reading code is like reading all things written: You have to scribble, make a mess, remind yourself that the work comes to you through trial and error and revision. "

" The human mind, as it turns out, is messy. "

" Technology does not run backward. Once a technical capability is out there, it is out there for good. "

" Y2K is showing everyone what technical people have been dealing with for years: the complex, muddled, bug-bitten systems we all depend on, and their nasty tendency toward the occasional disaster. "

" Through the miracle of natural genetic recombination, each child, with the sole exception of an identical twin, is conceived as a unique being. Even the atmosphere of the womb works its subtle changes, and by the time we emerge into the light, we are our own persons. "

" Productivity has always been the justification for the prepackaging of programming knowledge. But it is worth asking about the sort of productivity gains that come from the simplifications of click-and-drag. "

" 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. "

" The brain is plastic, continuously changing its organization. "

" It had to happen to me sometime: sooner or later, I would have to lose sight of the cutting edge. That moment every technical person fears - the fall into knowledge exhaustion, obsolescence, techno-fuddy-duddyism - there was no reason to think I could escape it forever. "

" With all the attention given to the personal computer, it's hard to remember that other companion machine in the room - the printer. "

" A computer is not really like us. It is a projection of a very small part of ourselves: that portion devoted to logic, order, rule and clarity. "

Ellen Ullman

Order

" Watching a program run is not as revealing as reading its code. "