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How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

Vernor Vinge

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Vernor Vinge
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 2
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Waukesha
Wisconsin
Vernor Steffen Vinge
Even
Quails
Omniscient
Viewpoint
Viewpoints
Describe
Explain

More quotes by Vernor Vinge

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All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.
Vernor Vinge
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But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.
Vernor Vinge
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And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.
Vernor Vinge
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It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.
Vernor Vinge
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Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.
Vernor Vinge
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Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.
Vernor Vinge
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Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Vernor Vinge
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Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.
Vernor Vinge
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So much technology, so little talent.
Vernor Vinge
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The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.
Vernor Vinge
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We're endangered by our own success.
Vernor Vinge
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Hexapodia as the key insight...I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs?
Vernor Vinge
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I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.
Vernor Vinge
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We will soon create intelligences greater than our own ... When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.
Vernor Vinge
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The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.
Vernor Vinge
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Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years-and not one of them could come near to this!
Vernor Vinge
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The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.
Vernor Vinge
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One of his greatest talents was empathy no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.
Vernor Vinge
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Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.
Vernor Vinge
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All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.
Vernor Vinge