Top 40 Quotes & Sayings by Clifford Stoll

Computers in classrooms are the filmstrips of the 1990s.

While I admire the insights of many of the people in the world of computing, I get this cold feeling that I speak a different language.

The Internet is a telephone system that's gotten uppity.

If you don't have an E-mail address, you're in the Netherworld. If you don't have your own World Wide Web page, you're a nobody.

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.

Merely that I have a World Wide Web page does not give me any power, any abilities, nor any status in the real world.

When I'm online, I'm alone in a room, tapping on a keyboard, staring at a cathode-ray tube.

Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.

Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?

Rather than bringing me closer to others, the time that I spend online isolates me from the most important people in my life, my family, my friends, my neighbourhood, my community.

I sense an insatiable demand for connectivity. Maybe all these people have discovered important uses for the Internet. Perhaps some of them feel hungry for a community that our real neighborhoods don't deliver. At least a few must wonder what the big deal is.

If you really want to know about the future, don't ask a technologist, a scientist, a physicist. No! Don't ask somebody who's writing code. No, if you want to know what society's going to be like in 20 years, ask a kindergarten teacher.

As the networks evolve, so do my opinions toward them, and my divergent feelings bring out conflicting points of view. In advance, I apologize to those who expect a consistent position from me.

The first time you do something, it's science. The second time, it's engineering. The third time, it's just being a technician. I'm a scientist. Once I do something, I want to do something else.

A box of crayons and a big sheet of paper provides a more expressive medium for kids than computerized paint programs.

Call me a troglodyte; I'd rather peruse those photos alongside my sweetheart, catch the newspaper on the way to work, and page thorough a real book.

It's a great medium for trivia and hobbies, but not the place for reasoned, reflective judgment. Suprisingly often, discussions degenerate into acrimony, insults and flames.

Minds think with ideas, not information No amount of data, bandwidth, or processing power can substitute for inspired thought.

We'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

For years, we've been bludgeoned with the cliche "information is power." But information isn't power. After all, who's got the most information in your neighborhood? Librarians. And they're famous for having no power at all. And who has the most power in your community? Politicians. And they're notorious for being ill-informed.

Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion.

The virtual community? The word virtual does not mean "virtue." It means "not." When I go to the store and they say: The shirt that you brought in is virtually done. It means it is not done, in the same way that the virtual community is not a community. There is no commitment there. When you log off, you are not a member of it anymore. My flesh and blood community, the sense of knowing my neighbor, knowing the guy across the street, having dinner with the people down the block, getting along with each other and making compromises, that's a genuine community with a commitment.

It's easier to apologize afterwards than getting something allowed in the first place.

Computers force us into creating with our minds and prevent us from making things with our hands. They dull the skills we use in everyday life.

The Internet is a perfect diversion from learning... it opens many doors that lead to empty rooms.

The information highway is being sold to us as delivering information, but what it's really delivering is data... Unlike data, information has utility, timeliness, accuracy, a pedigree... Editors serve as barometers of quality, and most of an editor's time is spent saying no.

Data isn't information, any more than fifty tons of cement is a skyscraper.

If we built houses the way we build software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

Spending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos, two hours later your fingers are yellow and you're no longer hungry, but you haven't been nourished.

Electronic communication is an instantaneous and illusory contact that creates a sense of intimacy without the emotional investment that leads to close friendships.

I spend almost as much time figuring out what's wrong with my computer as I do actually using it.

No computer network with pretty graphics can ever replace the salespeople that make our society work.

There is a difference between having access to information and having the savvy it takes to interpret it.

The Internet has no such organization - files are made available at random locations. To search through this chaos, we need smart tools, programs that find resources for us.

Why is it that drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?

Data isn't information. ... Information, unlike data, is useful. While there's a gulf between data and information, there's a wide ocean between information and knowledge. What turns the gears in our brains isn't information, but ideas, inventions, and inspiration. Knowledge-not information-implies understanding. And beyond knowledge lies what we should be seeking: wisdom.

Here are my strong reservations about the wave of computer networks. They isolate us from one another and cheapen the meaning of actual experience. They work against literacy and creativity. They undercut our schools and libraries.

What's society going to be like when the kids today are phenomenally good at text messaging and spend a huge amount of on-screen time, but have never gone bowling together?

The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

I claim that this bookless library is a dream, a hallucination of on-line addicts; network neophytes, and library-automation insiders...Instead, I suspect computers will deviously chew away at libraries from the inside. They'll eat up book budgets and require librarians that are more comfortable with computers than with children and scholars. Libraries will become adept at supplying the public with fast, low-quality information. The result won't be a library without books--it'll be a library without value.