Quote

We're endangered by our own success.

Vernor Vinge

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Vernor Vinge
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 2
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Waukesha
Wisconsin
Vernor Steffen Vinge
Endangered
Success

More quotes by Vernor Vinge

Image
I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.
Vernor Vinge
Image
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
Image
Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.
Vernor Vinge
Image
Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.
Vernor Vinge
Image
When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.
Vernor Vinge
Image
He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.
Vernor Vinge
Image
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
Image
Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.
Vernor Vinge
Image
Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all – no one's around to write horror stories.
Vernor Vinge
Image
The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.
Vernor Vinge
Image
One of his greatest talents was empathy no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.
Vernor Vinge
Image
Politics is good when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.
Vernor Vinge
Image
I say, let's learn more and then speculate.
Vernor Vinge
Image
Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.
Vernor Vinge
Image
Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.
Vernor Vinge
Image
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
Image
The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.
Vernor Vinge
Image
Once upon a time I was such a good liar I could talk the fish right into my mouths.
Vernor Vinge
Image
I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.
Vernor Vinge
Image
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Vernor Vinge