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" You can only get a beginner's mind once. "
Ellen Ullman
Get
Only
Mind
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" The act of voting, to put it in computing terms, is a question of user interface. "
Ellen Ullman
Question
Act
Interface
" Before the advent of the Web, if you wanted to sustain a belief in far-fetched ideas, you had to go out into the desert, or live on a compound in the mountains, or move from one badly furnished room to another in a series of safe houses. "
Ellen Ullman
Ideas
Desert
Live
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Know
Water
New
" I came of technical age with UNIX, where I learned with power-greedy pleasure that you could kill a system right out from under yourself with a single command. "
Ellen Ullman
Right
Pleasure
Out
" I broke into the ranks of computing in the early 1980s, when women were just starting to poke their shoulder pads through crowds of men. There was no legal protection against 'hostile environments for women.' "
Ellen Ullman
Women
Protection
Men
" I fear for the world the Internet is creating. "
Ellen Ullman
Internet
World
Creating
" I'm a pessimist. But I think I'd describe my pessimism as broken-hearted optimism. "
Ellen Ullman
Pessimism
Pessimist
Optimism
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Growing
Values
Technology
" I'm pretty bad at crying. "
Ellen Ullman
Crying
Pretty
Bad
" Computer systems could not work without standards - an agreement among programs and systems about how they will exchange information. "
Ellen Ullman
How
Work
Will
" The ability to 'multitask,' to switch rapidly among many competing focuses of attention, has become the hallmark of a successful citizen of the 21st century. "
Ellen Ullman
Attention
Citizen
Become
" I won't use Twitter. Twitter posts are thought-farts. I don't care about unconsidered thoughts of the moment. "
Ellen Ullman
Twitter
Thoughts
Moment
" My approach to being a self-taught programmer was to find out who was smart and who would be helpful, and these were - these are both men and women. And without learning from my co-workers, I never could've gone on in the profession as long as I did. "
Ellen Ullman
Find
Learning
Smart
" We don't have to live up to our computer. "
Ellen Ullman
Up
Our
Live
" Programmers seem to be changing the world. It would be a relief, for them and for all of us, if they knew something about it. "
Ellen Ullman
Seem
Relief
Knew
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Mother
You
Dog
" Truly new inventions take time to play out. "
Ellen Ullman
Inventions
Play
Out
" It's possible to let technology absorb what we know and then re-express it in intricate mechanisms - parts and circuit boards and software objects - mechanisms we can use but do not understand in crucial ways. This not-knowing is fine while everything works as we expected. "
Ellen Ullman
Know
Understand
Technology
" Some people hit a profession and just keep going deeper into it, making a life and making it more and more stable. That's not been my experience. I always want to try something new. "
Ellen Ullman
Experience
People
Life
" It is deep in our nature to make tools. "
Ellen Ullman
Deep
Make
Nature
" I don't like the idea that Facebook controls how people express themselves and changes it periodically according to whatever algorithms they use to figure out what they should do or the whim of some programmer or some CEO. That bothers me a great deal. "
Ellen Ullman
People
Great
Facebook
" Our Constitution is designed to change very slowly. It's a feature, not a bug. "
Ellen Ullman
Change
Our
Slowly
" I think many people have wonderful stories inside them and the talent to tell those stories. But the writing life, with its isolation and uncertain outcomes, keeps most from the task. "
Ellen Ullman
Writing
Life
People
" Technology does not run backward. Once a technical capability is out there, it is out there for good. "
Ellen Ullman
Technology
Run
Technical
" It is one thing for an artist to experiment on a canvas, but it's entirely different to experiment on a living creature. "
Ellen Ullman
Thing
Living
Artist
" People imagine that programming is logical, a process like fixing a clock. Nothing could be further from the truth. "
Ellen Ullman
Process
Truth
Clock
" When I am writing, and occasionally achieve single focus and presence, I finally feel that is where I'm supposed to be. Everything else is kind of anxiety. "
Ellen Ullman
Feel
Anxiety
Focus
" The human mind, as it turns out, is messy. "
Ellen Ullman
Human
Human Mind
Messy
" When I am around people I most admire, I tend to hug the wall. "
Ellen Ullman
Hug
I Am
Wall
" No one in the government is seriously penalized when Social Security numbers are stolen and misused; only the number-holders suffer. "
Ellen Ullman
Seriously
Numbers
Government