Human Computer Interaction Quotes

#1. It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part. #Quote by Norbert Wiener

#2. We must design for the way people behave,
not for how we would wish them to behave. #Quote by Donald A. Norman

#3. Q7. The total output of all the mathematicians who have ever lived, together with the output of all the human mathematicians of the next (say) thousand years is finite and could be contained in the memory banks of an appropriate computer. Surely this particular computer could, therefore, simulate this output and thus behave (externally) in the same way as a human mathematician-whatever the Godel argument might appear to tell us to the contrary?

While this is presumably true, it ignores the essential issue, which is how we (or computers) know which mathematical statements are true and which are false. (In any case, the mere storage of mathematical statements is something that could be achieved by a system much less sophisticated than a general purpose computer, e.g. photographically.) The way that the computer is being employed in Q7 totally ignores the critical issue of truth judgment. One could equally well envisage computers that contain nothing but lists of totally false mathematical 'theorems', or lists containing random jumbles of truths and falsehoods. How are we to tell which computer to trust? The arguments that I am trying to make here do not say that an effective simulation of the output of conscious human activity (here mathematics) is impossible, since purely by chance the computer might 'happen' to get it right-even without any understanding whatsoever. But the odds against this are absurdly enormous, and the issues that are being addressed here, namel #Quote by Roger Penrose

#4. He was also desperate for human company - he would have been glad to discuss religion with a Calvinist, just to have somebody smarter than the ship's computer to talk to. #Quote by Anonymous

#5. It's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate. #Quote by Nicholas Negroponte

#6. Increasingly we live in a world of concrete, tarmac, television, and computer screens. These are great mechanical and electronic constructs of the human intellect--but they blot out our view of the rising and setting sun and keep our feet from being grounded in the earth, which in many cultures is a sacred act of communion #Quote by Martin Lockley

#7. Imagine you are writing an email. You are in front of the computer. You are operating the computer, clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard, but the message will be sent to a human over the internet. So you are working before the computer, but with a human behind the computer. #Quote by Yukihiro Matsumoto

#8. The part of the brain that is watching the television and is on the computer at the same time, preparing to jump onto the treadmill for 15 minutes, might be able to lead into sex, but it would be hard put to lead us to romance, or to real authentic human connection. #Quote by Marianne Williamson

#9. There are at least two ways to believe in the idea of quality. You can believe there's something ineffable going on within the human mind, or you can believe we just don't understand what quality in a mind is yet, even though we might someday. Either of those opinions allows one to distinguish quantity and quality. In order to confuse quantity and quality, you have to reject both possibilities. The mere possibility of there being something ineffable about personhood is what drives many technologists to reject the notion of quality. They want to live in an airtight reality that resembles an idealized computer program, in which everything is understood and there are no fundamental mysteries. They recoil from even the hint of a potential zone of mystery or an unresolved seam in one's worldview. This desire for absolute order usually leads to tears in human affairs, so there is a historical reason to distrust it. Materialist extremists have long seemed determined to win a race with religious fanatics: Who can do the most damage to the most people? #Quote by Jaron Lanier

#10. If patterns of ones and zeroes were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long strings of ones and zeroes, then what kind of creature could be represented by a long string of lives and deaths? #Quote by Thomas Pynchon

#11. An ironic revelation of the television-computer age is that what people want from machines is humanity: stories, contact, and interaction. #Quote by Thomas Lewis

#12. Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying Blood ... blood ... blood ... blood ... #Quote by Douglas Adams

#13. Computer enhancement has spread to still photography in advertisements, fashion pictorials, and magazine covers, where the human figure and face are subtly elongated or remodeled at will. Caricature is our ruling mode. #Quote by Camille Paglia

#14. The math-powered applications powering the data economy were based on choices made by fallible human beings. Some of these choices were no doubt made with the best intentions. Nevertheless, many of these models encoded human prejudice, misunderstanding, and bias into the software systems that increasingly managed our lives. Like gods, these mathematical models were opaque, their workings invisible to all but the highest priests in their domain: mathematicians and computer scientists. Their verdicts, even when wrong or harmful, were beyond dispute or appeal. And they tended to punish the poor and the oppressed in our society, while making the rich richer. #Quote by Cathy O'Neil

#15. If you program a purpose into a computer program, does that constitute its will? Does it have free will, if a programmer programmed its purpose? Is that programming any different from the way we are programmed by our genes and brains? Is a programmed will a servile will? Is human will a servile will? And is not the servile will the home and source of all feelings of defilement, infection, transgression, and rage? #Quote by Kim Stanley Robinson

#16. A meticulous virtual copy of the human brain would enable basic research on brain cells and circuits or computer-based drug trials. #Quote by Henry Markram

#17. Specifically, the awareness that I claim is demonstrably non-computational is our understanding of the properties of natural numbers 0,1,2,3,4,....(One might even say that our concept of a natural number is, in a sense, a form of non-geometric 'visualization'.) We shall see in 2.5, by a readily accessible form of Godel's theorem (cf. response to query Q16), that this understanding is something that cannot be simulated computationally. From time to time one hears that some computer system has been 'trained' so as to 'understand' the concept of natural numbers. However, this cannot be true, as we shall see. It is our awareness of what a 'number' can actually mean that enables us to latch on to the correct concept. When we have this correct concept, we can-at least in principle-provide the correct answers to families of questions about numbers that are put to us, when no finite set of rules can do this. With only rules and no direct awareness, a computer-controlled robot (like Deep Thought) would be necessarily limited in ways in which we are not limited ourselves-although if we give the robot clever enough rules for its behaviour it may perform prodigious feats, some of which lie far beyond unaided human capabilities in specific narrowly enough defined areas, and it might be able to fool us, for some while, into thinking that it also possesses awareness. #Quote by Roger Penrose

#18. 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. #Quote by Edward R. Murrow

#19. The Soviets were not 50% right, they were entirely wrong. They weren't
quantitatively wrong about the amount of variance due to the environment,
they were qualitatively wrong about what environmental manipulations
could do in the face of built-in universal human machinery. Having said this,
though, I now feel no particular impulse to vote Republican.
Also, it's quite possible that someday you could create perfectly unselfish
people ... if you used sufficiently advanced neurosurgery, drugs, and/or
brain-computer interfaces to engineer their brains into a new state that no
current human brain occupies. Whether or not this is in fact possible isn't
something that ideology gets to decide. The reasoning errors of past
communists can't prohibit any particular future technological advance from
being possible or practical. Having said that, I feel no particular impulse to
turn liberal. #Quote by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#20. Where do you draw the line as a human being? Written record is only, what, a couple thousand years? And this scientific revolution is less than a hundred years. And computers only a few decades! We've changed so much. It's amazing, the speed of changes. #Quote by Hiroshi Sugimoto

#21. What can you say about pain?
Words can trace only the shadow of the thing itself. The reality of hard, sharp physical pain is like nothing else, and it is beyond language. The world is too much with us, day and night, but when we hurt, when we really hurt, the world melts and fades and becomes a ghost, a dim memory, a silly unimportant thing. Whatever ideals, dreams, loves, fears, and thoughts we might have had become ultimately unimportant. We are alone with our pain, it is the only force in the cosmos, the only thing of substance, the only thing that matters, and if the pain is bad enough and lasts long enough, if it is the sort of agony that goes on and on, then all the things that are our humanity melt before it and the proud sophisticated computer that is the human brain becomes capable of but a single thought:
Make it stop, make it STOP! (from The Glass Flower) #Quote by George R R Martin

#22. This kind of pragmatism has become a hallmark of our psychological culture. In the mid-1990s, I described how it was commonplace for people to "cycle through" different ideas of the human mind as (to name only a few images) mechanism, spirit, chemistry, and vessel for the soul.14 These days, the cycling through intensifies. We are in much more direct contact with the machine side of mind. People are fitted with a computer chip to help with Parkinson's. They learn to see their minds as program and hardware. They take antidepressants prescribed by their psychotherapists, confident that the biochemical and oedipal self can be treated in one room. They look for signs of emotion in a brain scan. Old jokes about couples needing "chemistry" turn out not to be jokes at all. #Quote by Sherry Turkle

#23. Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do. #Quote by Vikram Chandra

#24. My research career has been devoted to understanding human decision-making and problem-solving processes. The pursuit of this goal has led me into the fields of political science, economics, cognitive psychology, computer science and philosophy of science, among others. #Quote by Herbert A. Simon

#25. Scientists in California have discovered a chemical in the brain that causes use of Windows in otherwise normal human beings. It's called alcohol. #Quote by David Pogue

#26. One view of photography is that it is a zen-like act which captures reality with its pants down - so that the vital click shows the anatomy bare. In this, the photographer is invisible but essential. A computer releasing the shutter would always miss the special moment that the human sensibility can register. For this work, the photographer's instinct is his aid, his personality a hindrance. #Quote by Peter Brook

#27. It is this simple. The religion of a computer is to compute - the religion of a scorpion is to sting in the face of danger - the religion of a human is to help other humans. #Quote by Abhijit Naskar

#28. To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so. #Quote by Robert Orben

#29. Computer and video games represent one of the most important new media developments of this generation. Unlike many other forms of entertainment they offer players the opportunity to explore, be creative, learn through interaction and express themselves to others. It is vitally important that we protect and nurture this new art form so that it can reach its full potential. Like most new forms of artistic expression that have come before (music, novels, movies), the primary critics of video games are the people that do not play them. #Quote by Will Wright

#30. If I were king, I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind. #Quote by Emilie Du Chatelet

#31. I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries. #Quote by Agatha Christie

#32. What is the next unit of time after milliseconds?"
"Microseconds."
"Correct. What is the next?"
"Nanoseconds."
"There you go," the professor revealed. "Computers and androids like Christmas operate on nanoseconds. A nanosecond to them is a precision unit like a millisecond to you and I. Now try to think what doing something for fifteen minutes is to them. A millisecond is one million nanoseconds. One second is one billion nanoseconds. A minute is sixty billion nanoseconds. Fifteen minutes equals to nine hundred billion nanoseconds. Multiply that by a million for scale - that's the disparity between a human precision unit and a computer precision unit we first talked about. What do you get? Nine hundred quadrillion nanoseconds. That is ten thousand four hundred seventeen days, one thousand four hundred eighty-eight weeks, three hundred forty-two months. That is twenty-eight point five years. Does that seem like ages to you or what?" (What constitutes "ages" to machines) #Quote by Alan Chains

#33. Computers and electronic music are not the opposite of the warm human music. It's exactly the same. #Quote by Bill Laswell

#34. There was a term some of Clive's friends used, the ones who did a lot of computer gaming - "the uncanny valley." It was a psychological threshold where things looked very human, but still weren't quite human enough. It was why some mannequins were creepy and others weren't, and CGI monsters looked better than CGI people. #Quote by Peter Clines

#35. An even more advanced form of uploading your mind into a computer was envisioned by computer scientist Hans Moravec. When I interviewed him, he claimed that his method of uploading the human mind could even be done without losing consciousness.

First you would be placed on a hospital gurney, next to a robot. Then a surgeon would take individual neurons from your brain and create a duplicate of these neurons (made of transistors) inside the robot. A cable would connect these transistorized neurons to your brain. As time goes by, more and more neurons are removed from your brain and duplicated in the robot. Because your brain is connected to the robot brain, you are fully conscious even as more and more neurons are replaced by transistors. Eventually, without losing consciousness, your entire brain and all its neurons are replaced by transistors. Once all one hundred billion neurons have been duplicated, the connection between you abd the artificial brain is finally cut. When you gaze back at the stretcher, you see your body, lacking its brain, while your consciousness now exists inside a robot. #Quote by Michio Kaku

#36. We don't even survive in the memories of the living. Science has destroyed that myth. Whenever we remember something, what we're doing is remembering the last time we remembered it; our memory doesn't go back to the original notch, the first one was cut, but to the last one. Human memory is virtual, like that of a computer. When we open a file we're not opening it as it was when we first created it, but as it was the last time we used it. It is called hypercathexis and is our brain's most sophisticated recourse when it comes to confronting pain. #Quote by Enrique De Heriz

#37. In my view, it is an error to think about 'alternatives to prison' if what we mean by that is 'electronic bracelets,' through which people are subject to computer-monitored house arrest, or granting fuller surveillance and disciplinary powers and technologies to other state agencies, such as welfare and mental health, through 'transcarceration' policies ... We need to decrease, not increase, the means by which the state, in its multifarious networks of authority, controls human lives and selectively incapacitates people who, no less than others, have the potential to contribute to the improvement of hte human condition. #Quote by Karlene Faith

#38. The Internet causes billions of images to appear on millions of computer monitors around the planet. From this galaxy of sight and sound will the face of Christ emerge and the voice of Christ be heard? For it is only when his face is seen and his voice heard that the world will know the glad tidings of our redemption. This is the purpose of evangelization. And this is what will make the Internet a genuinely human space, for if there is no room for Christ, there is no room for man. #Quote by Pope John Paul II

#39. [A]s a species, we are very poor at programming. Our brains are built to understand other humans, not computers. We're terrible at forcing our minds into the precise modes of thought needed to interact with a computer, and we consistently make errors when we try. That's why computer science and programming degrees take such time and dedication to acquire: we are literally learning how to speak to an alien mind, of a kind that has not existed on Earth until very recently. #Quote by Stuart Armstrong

#40. Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly. #Quote by Marshall McLuhan

#41. The computer is usually seen as a solely beneficial invention, which liberates human fantasy and facilitates efficient design work. I wish to express my serious concern in this respect, at least considering the current role of the computer in education and the design process. Computer imaging tends to flatten our magnificent, multi-sensory, simultaneous and synchronic capacities of imagination by turning the design process into a passive visual manipulation, a retinal journey. The computer creates a distance between the maker and the object, whereas drawing by hand as well as working with models put the designer in a haptic contact with the object, or space. In our imagination, the object is simultaneously held in the hand and inside the head, and the imagined and projected physical image is modelled by our embodied imagination. We are inside and outside of the conceived object at the same time. #Quote by Juhani Pallasmaa

#42. İt is not true that the more you read, the more intelligent you become. Without thinking you cannot be intelligent. You need to think in order to avoid ready-form answers, which can satisfy the inquisitive mind, but cannot give a clear insight into anything, making the brain only some kind of container of various information similar to the microchip of robot or computer. You would become a social robot whose brain contains various information but cannot think. That is why most men know a lot, but learn nothing from that knowledge. Most men know a lot, but can understand nothing on the base of that knowledge. However, it is not also true that the more you think, the more intelligent you become. Without reading you cannot be intelligent. You need to read, especially scientific literature, in order to model any problem which fascinates your mind in a proper and clear way. There cannot be vacuum in the human mind, if there is no scientific rationality there, then mystical irrationality would cover the whole space in your mind. There is no need to emphasize that being under the strong influence of mystical irrationality would confuse your mind more and more. But if scientific rationality appears, mystical irrationality disappears immediately. #Quote by Elmar Hussein

#43. The human brain works as a binary computer and can only analyze the exact information-based zeros and ones (or black and white). Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses fuzzy logic to analyze information that can't be easily defined in zeros and ones. #Quote by Naveen Jain

#44. If the clockwork universe equated the human body with the mechanics of the clock, the digital universe now equates human consciousness with the processing of the computer. We joke that things don't compute, that we need a reboot, or that our memory has been wiped. #Quote by Douglas Rushkoff

#45. I am confident that we can do better than GUIs because the basic problem with them (and with the Linux and Unix interfaces) is that they ask a human being to do things that we know experimentally humans cannot do well. The question I asked myself is, given everything we know about how the human mind works, could we design a computer and computer software so that we can work with the least confusion and greatest efficiency? #Quote by Jef Raskin

#46. CYBERPOWER is now a fundamental fact of global life. In political, economic, and military affairs, information and information technology provide and support crucial elements of operational activities. U.S. national security efforts have begun to incorporate cyber into strategic calculations. Those efforts, however, are only a beginning. The critical conclusion...is that the United States must create an effective national and international strategic framework for the development and use of cyber as part of an overall national security strategy.

Such a strategic framework will have both structural and geopolitical elements. Structural activities will focus on those parts of cyber that enhance capabilities for use in general. Those categories include heightened security, expanded development of research and human capital, improved governance, and more effective organization. Geopolitical activities will focus on more traditional national security and defense efforts. Included in this group are sophisticated development of network-centric operations; appropriate integrated planning of computer network attack capabilities; establishment of deterrence doctrine that incorporates cyber; expansion of effective cyber influence capabilities; carefully planned incorporation of cyber into military planning (particularly stability operations); establishment of appropriate doctrine, education, and training regarding cyber by the Services and nonmilitary elements so that cyber ca #Quote by Franklin D. Kramer

#47. The machinery of destruction is complete, poised on a hair trigger, waiting for the 'button' to be 'pushed' by some misguided or deranged human being or for some faulty computer chip to send out the instruction to fire. That so much should be balanced on so fine a point
that the fruit of four and a half billion years can be undone in a careless moment
is a fact against which belief rebels. #Quote by Jonathan Schell

#48. Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important. #Quote by Margaret Thatcher