Internet Quotes (24 quotes)
![Samuel F. B. Morse quote: [It would not be long] ere the whole surface of this country would be channelled for those nerves whic](https://todayinsci.com/M/Morse_Samuel/MorseSamuel-Country500x250px.jpg)
[It would not be long] ere the whole surface of this country would be channelled for those nerves which are to diffuse, with the speed of thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring throughout the land, making, in fact, one neighborhood of the whole country.
Samuel F.B. Morse: His Letters and Journals (1914), vol. 2, 85.
[On the practical applications of particle physics research with the Large Hadron Collider.] Sometimes the public says, “What's in it for Numero Uno? Am I going to get better television reception? Am I going to get better Internet reception?” Well, in some sense, yeah. … All the wonders of quantum physics were learned basically from looking at atom-smasher technology. … But let me let you in on a secret: We physicists are not driven to do this because of better color television. … That's a spin-off. We do this because we want to understand our role and our place in the universe.
As quoted in Alan Boyle, 'Discovery of Doom? Collider Stirs Debate', article (8 Sep 2008) on a msnbc.com web page. The article writer included the information that Kaku noted that past discoveries from the world of particle physics ushered in many of the innovations we enjoy today, ranging from satellite communications and handheld media players to medical PET scanners (which put antimatter to practical use)."
[The internet] ought to be like clay, rather than a sculpture that you observe from a distance.
From archive interview (Nov 1999) rebroadcast on PBS radio program Science Friday (14 Mar 2014).
A friend called me up the other day and talked about investing in a dot-com that sells lobsters. Internet lobsters. Where will this end? The next day he sent me a huge package of lobsters on ice. How low can you stoop?
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Computing is … a motionless consumption of the mind. … A generation of network surfers is becoming adept at navigating the electronic backwaters, while losing touch with the world around them.
In Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway (1995), 137.
Four years ago nobody but nuclear physicists had ever heard of the Internet. Today even my cat, Socks, has his own web page. I’m amazed at that. I meet kids all the time, been talking to my cat on the Internet.
Referring to the Next Generation Internet initiative in Remarks at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (29 Oct 1996). American Presidency Project web page. [Clinton took office 20 Jan 1993, and signed the Next Generation Internet Research Act of 1998 on 28 Oct 1998.]
History tells us that [leading minds] can’t do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.
From weekly Democratic address as President-Elect, online video (20 Dec 2008), announcing his selection of science and technology advisers. C-Span video 282995-102.
I believe in the not-too-distant future, people are going to learn to trust their information to the Net more than they now do, and be able to essentially manage very large amounts and perhaps their whole lifetime of information in the Net with the notion that they can access it securely and privately for as long as they want, and that it will persist over all the evolution and technical changes.
From transcript of interview by Steve Inskeep, 'Computing Pioneers Discuss the State of the Net', Morning Edition (22 Aug 2005) on npr.org website.
I can’t say I’m particularly happy about all the spam and the viruses and the equivalent that we see on the Net, but I think technology can deal with many of the problems that we’re now seeing, whether it’s filtering or whatever, and laws may help a lot.
From transcript of interview by Steve Inskeep, 'Computing Pioneers Discuss the State of the Net', Morning Edition (22 Aug 2005) on npr.org website.
I sometimes wonder how we spent leisure time before satellite television and Internet came along…and then I realise that I have spent more than half of my life in the ‘dark ages’!
From interview (5 Dec 2003) days before his 86th birthday with Nalaka Gunawardene, published on the internet sites http://southasia.oneworld.net and arthurcclarke.net.
I think we’re just going to have to live with the microcosm in the electronic world of the kind of things that we might see in the physical world.
From transcript of interview by Steve Inskeep, 'Computing Pioneers Discuss the State of the Net', Morning Edition (22 Aug 2005) on npr.org website.
Simple molecules combine to make powerful chemicals. Simple cells combine to make powerful life-forms. Simple electronics combine to make powerful computers. Logically, all things are created by a combination of simpler, less capable components. Therefore, a supreme being must be in our future, not our origin. What if “God” is the consciousness that will be created when enough of us are connected by the Internet?!!
Thoughts by character Dogbert in Dilbert cartoon strip (11 Feb 1996).
Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program.
Earliest use of the term Internet.
Earliest use of the term Internet.
Request for Comments No, 675,' (Network Working Group, electronic text) (1974). In Fred R. Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), 141.
The hype, skepticism and bewilderment associated with the Internet—concerns about new forms of crime, adjustments in social mores, and redefinition of business practices— mirror the hopes, fears, and misunderstandings inspired by the telegraph. Indeed, they are only to be expected. They are the direct consequences of human nature, rather than technology.
Given a new invention, there will always be some people who see only its potential to do good, while others see new opportunities to commit crime or make money. We can expect the same reactions to whatever new inventions appear in the twenty-first century.
Such reactions are amplified by what might be termed chronocentricity—the egotism that one’s own generation is poised on the very cusp of history. Today, we are repeatedly told that we are in the midst of a communications revolution. But the electric telegraph was, in many ways, far more disconcerting for the inhabitants of the time than today’s advances are for us. If any generation has the right to claim that it bore the full bewildering, world-shrinking brunt of such a revolution, it is not us—it is our nineteenth- century forebears.
Given a new invention, there will always be some people who see only its potential to do good, while others see new opportunities to commit crime or make money. We can expect the same reactions to whatever new inventions appear in the twenty-first century.
Such reactions are amplified by what might be termed chronocentricity—the egotism that one’s own generation is poised on the very cusp of history. Today, we are repeatedly told that we are in the midst of a communications revolution. But the electric telegraph was, in many ways, far more disconcerting for the inhabitants of the time than today’s advances are for us. If any generation has the right to claim that it bore the full bewildering, world-shrinking brunt of such a revolution, it is not us—it is our nineteenth- century forebears.
In The Victorian Internet (1998).
The Internet is a microcosm of society.
From transcript of interview by Steve Inskeep, 'Computing Pioneers Discuss the State of the Net', Morning Edition (22 Aug 2005) on npr.org website.
The Internet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea—massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
Posted to a mailing list (1992), and circulated from there by some newsgroups. As authenticated in 'Quotable Spaf' on his faculty webpage at purdue.com
The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.
In Richard Rogers, 'The Internet Treats Censorship as a Malfunction and Routes Around It? : A New Media Approach to the Study of State Internet Censorship', the attribution of this quote to John Gilmore is supported by giving an excerpt from the notes in Joseph Reagle, 'Why the Internet is Good' [source: Gilmore states: “I have never found where I first said this. But everyone believes it was me, as do I. If you find an appearance of this quote from before March ’94, please let me know.”] Also cited as attribute to John Gilmore in Peter H. Lewis, 'Limiting a Medium Without Boundaries; How Do You Let the Good Fish Through the Net While Blocking the Bad?', New York Times (15 Jan 1996), D1. The Rogers article is collected in Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson (eds.), The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture (2009), 243.
The Internet’s been so great, and it’s so nice to have fans do nice, elaborate websites, but I think the downside is some of the things... for real fans to go on and see that 90 percent of the information isn’t true or to see pictures that aren’t really me, or for them to be able to sell these things, that’s one of the downsides, I think.
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The microbial global brain—gifted with long-range transport, data trading, genetic variants … and the ability to reinvent genomes—began its operations some 91 trillion bacterial generations before the birth of the Internet. Ancient bacteria, if they functioned like those today, had mastered the art of worldwide information exchange. … The earliest microorganisms would have used planet-sweeping currents of wind and water to carry the scraps of genetic code…
In 'Creative Nets in the Precambrian Era', Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (2000), 18-19.
The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity.
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We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We'll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.
From First Inaugural Address (20 Jan 2009)
Why is it that the self-aggrandizements of Cicero, the lecheries and whining of Ovid and the blatherings of that debauched old goose Seneca made it onto the Net before the works that give us solid technical information about what Rome was really good at, viz. the construction of her great buildings and works of engineering?
From headnotes written by Bill Thayer to his online transcription of Vitruvius: On Architecture.
WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project
Title of an electronic document (1990) co-authored with Robert A Caillau. In Fred R. Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), 57.
You can’t gaze in the crystal ball and see the future. What the Internet is going to be in the future is what society makes it. It will be what the businesses offer, it will be new products and services. It’s the new ideas that show up that nobody thought of before.
From interview with John Markoff, 'Viewing Where the Internet Goes', New York Times (30 Dec 2013).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
