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The first step is always to succeed in becoming surprised - to notice that there is something funny going on.

David Gelernter

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David Gelernter
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: March 5
Artist
Computer Scientist
University Teacher
David Hillel Gelernter
Steps
Funny
Problem
Surprised
Firsts
Notice
First
Step
Going
Succeed
Something
Creativity
Always
Becoming

More quotes by David Gelernter

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For years, computer scientists were treating operating systems design as sort of an open-reserch issue, when the field's direction had been decided by commercial operations. Computer science has become completely cut off from reality.
David Gelernter
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There are certain subjects which seem to me can be taught very effectively online, although they aren't.
David Gelernter
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I think the print media have failed to make the most of their opportunity. They may all disappear because they are approaching things in the wrong way.
David Gelernter
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Without commenting on the legal aspects, which I'm not capable of doing, those are lifestreams and there are other companies that have done similar things. That makes me angry personally, not because of the money, but because of the deliberate failure to acknowledge work that we would have made freely available as academics.
David Gelernter
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Really good ideas are always good beyond what you anticipated originally.
David Gelernter
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Surprise is the beginning of wisdom.
David Gelernter
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Object-oriented programming as it emerged in Simula 67 allows software structure to be based on real-world structures, and gives programmers a powerful way to simplify the design and construction of complex programs.
David Gelernter
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Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.
David Gelernter
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The best computer scientists are...technologists who crave beauty.
David Gelernter
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At the same time, on the networks, there are thousands of groups that are building lifestreams, or lifestreaming for themselves in their own way. We'd love to see this activity.
David Gelernter
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Computers make people stupid.
David Gelernter
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if we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history.
David Gelernter
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We can't share the earth with pure evil anymore than we can share the earth with smallpox.
David Gelernter
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The book is a unit and is such a brilliant ergonomic unit.
David Gelernter
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Readable text and authority so that readers know how to spend - no matter how much information there is, I have the same number of minutes in my day, and I need to look to sources that I trust.
David Gelernter
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We still have books because they are so brilliantly suited to the way human beings absorb information and at their best, they are among the most beautiful things we have.
David Gelernter
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I think the universities as we know them will be dead in a future years. I'd like to see them replaced by something better, instead of something worse, and it's not clear which way it will go.
David Gelernter
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The future was and remains the quintessential American art form. Other nations sit back and let their futures happen we construct ours. We can let the future happen, or take the trouble to imagine it. We can imagine it dark or bright - and in the long run, that's how it will be.
David Gelernter
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There are great science books that were conceived as books. Feynman's famous introductory lectures in physics, which have a beginning and an end, which are written with style.
David Gelernter
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Software unification. So that I no longer care what computing device I pick up, whether it's a laptop or desktop, whether it's one I own or one in a public place, whether it has a small screen or a large screen.
David Gelernter