Great “Quotation” Expectations

What’s your favourite technology quote? I’ve always thought that Bill Gates’ apocryphal, “I’d say 640 K ought to be enough for anybody,” comment – which he has since dismissed of course – was a good one.

I was reminded of this topic when I was asked to get hold of a Bloomsbury Reference book this weekend for my father entitled Quotations for Speeches. Promising as it does to provide the, “right quote for every occasion,” I leafed through, giving the Woody Allen and Roosevelt entries top priority - while at the same time avoiding any of Germaine Greer’s teachings of course.

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On the lookout for technology-focused words of wisdom, I did find a couple. Aldous Huxley seemed to be on a bit of a ‘downer’ when he said, “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”

There are a few other good ones…

“Technology presumes there's just one right way to do things and there never is,” according to Robert M. Pirsig. This is a hard one to get past your average software developer isn’t it? Problem solving and flexibility are an inherent part of the software engineering process these days right? Maybe this is why his book wasn’t called ‘Zen: and the art of application lifecycle management’ huh?

So to finish up – this is the one that really got me thinking about software application development…

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915 American Writer

… and the reason why I think this is so pertinent is that it means we can build all the computing power under the sun, but without the creativity that comes from one individual (at any level be it the project manager or the junior code script kiddie) then we can build nothing.

So, please, share you thoughts.