Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
Douglas AdamsRead
First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII β and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The evolution of the personal computer reflects our changing understanding of its capabilities.
Douglas Adams illustrates the journey of perception regarding the personal computer through various technological advancements. Initially regarded as a simple calculator, it transformed into a typewriter, then a television, and ultimately became a vehicle for information sharing via the World Wide Web. This evolution signifies not only the advancements in technology but also how our understanding of technology adapts as it evolves.
Themes
TechnologyEvolutionPerceptionInnovationComputers
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation about the history of technology, you might say, 'As Douglas Adams pointed out, the evolution of the PC has changed how we perceive technology.'
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Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. [...] Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.
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Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.
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What the computer in virtual reality enables us to do is to recalibrate ourselves so that we can start seeing those pieces of information that are invisible to us but have become important for us to understand.
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We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
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