The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the struggle of balancing workload and the potential of technology, emphasizing the tension between unfinished tasks and technological capability.
In this quote, Donald Knuth highlights the common challenge faced by individuals in the tech industry who often find it difficult to rest due to the overwhelming number of tasks that seem urgent and important. He points out the disparity between the possibilities that modern technology can offer and the reality of what has been accomplished, suggesting that the constant push to innovate and complete more can lead to mental fatigue and an inability to switch off.
In practice
This quote could be shared at a tech conference to emphasize the challenges of product development.
Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas and that they're trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore's Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks!
Error-prone or biased artificial-intelligence systems have the potential to taint our social ecosystem in ways that are initially hard to detect, harmful in the long term, and expensive - or even impossible - to reverse.
Even though you can't get along without your smartphone, there are not many essential services on your smartphone. They're mostly convenience; you could live without it. Essential means you die without it. A gadget that warns you're about to have a heart attack - that's essential. We're about to go into that phase with smartphones.
There was a failure to recognize the deep problems in AI; for instance, those captured in Blocks World. The people building physical robots learned nothing.
The upside of web-based journalism is that everybody gets a chance. The downside is that everybody gets a chance.
We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative.
In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor and that is the danger that we face today.
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