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Computer science departments have always considered 'user interface' research to be sissy work.

Nicholas Negroponte

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Nicholas Negroponte
Age: 80
Born: 1943
Born: December 1
Architect
Author
Computer Scientist
Investor
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Considered
Research
Sissy
Computer
Interface
Science
Interfaces
Work
Departments
Always
User
Users
Department

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Nature is pretty good at networks, self-organizing systems. By contrast, social systems are top-down and hierarchical, from which we draw the basic assumption that organization and order can only come from centralism.
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What's the difference between obsolete and cutting edge? Obsolete works.
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I think life's turning into an omelet and people will just have to live with that.
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Young people, I happen to believe, are the world's most precious natural resource.
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Companies cannot really see beyond their current customer base. They explicitly or implicitly do things to protect their current customers. And the last person to want real change is your customer. This is why most new ideas come from small companies that have nothing to lose.
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You go to developing countries today and you'll find automobiles that you haven't seen since you're childhood and that's because they really are valuable, they're taken care of, they're repaired, and when something breaks, they just don't buy a new one, they actually fix it.
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I'm not good at selling laptops. I'm good at selling ideas.
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Remember that the military used wind-up radios for years.
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Big companies are looking closer term, and even the most technological companies spend less than 1% of sales on research. Startups have suffered the burst bubble.
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While a significant part of learning certain comes from teaching - but good teaching and by good teachers - a major measure comes from exploration, from reinventing the wheel and finding out for oneself.
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My advice to graduates is to do anything except what you are trained for. Take that training to a place where it is out of place and stimulate ideas, shake up establishments, and don't take no for an answer.
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I've spent my whole life worrying about the human-computer interface, so I don't want to suggest that what we have today is even close to acceptable.
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It's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate.
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Even in the developing parts of the world, kids take to computers like fish to water.
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Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. Whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education, ... We need to depend more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is one important means of doing that.
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It makes no sense to ship atoms when you can ship bits.
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If you were to hire household staff to cook, clean, drive, stoke the fire, and answer the door, can you imagine suggesting that they not talk to each other, not see what each other is doing, not coordinate their functions?
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Where do new ideas come from? The answer is simple: differences. While there are many theories of creativity, the only tenet they all share is that creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions. The best way to maximize differences is to mix ages, cultures, and disciplines.
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