It's even hard for people to imagine today that telephones were wired, and they certainly were and you went to the end of a wire to make a phone call. Nicholas Negroponte More Quotes by Nicholas Negroponte More Quotes From Nicholas Negroponte Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. Nicholas Negroponte computer-literacylearningtechnology Where do new ideas come from? The answer is simple: differences. While there are many theories of creativity, the only tenet they all share is that creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions. The best way to maximize differences is to mix ages, cultures, and disciplines. Nicholas Negroponte creativitysimpleideas Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. Whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education, ... We need to depend more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is one important means of doing that. Nicholas Negroponte importantselfmean It makes no sense to ship atoms when you can ship bits. Nicholas Negroponte shipsbitsatoms But just as elevators have changed the shape of buildings and cars have changed the shape of cities, bits will change the shape of organizations, be they companies, nations, or social structures. Nicholas Negroponte carorganizationcities Digital living will include less and less dependence upon being in a specific place at a specific time, and the transmission of place itself will start to become possible. Nicholas Negroponte transmissiondependencedigital It's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate. Nicholas Negroponte computer-literacytechnologyshould Programming allows you to think about thinking, and while debugging you learn learning. Nicholas Negroponte debuggingprogrammingthinking One of the basics of a good system of innovation is diversity. In some ways, the stronger the culture (national, institutional, generational, or other), the less likely it is to harbor innovative thinking. Common and deep-seated beliefs, widespread norms, and behavior and performance standards are enemies of new ideas. Any society that prides itself on being harmonious and homogeneous is very unlikely to catalyze idiosyncratic thinking. Suppression of innovation need not be overt. It can be simply a matter of peoples walking around in tacit agreement and full comfort with the status quo. Nicholas Negroponte prideagreementthinking We have to make machines understand what they're doing, or they won't be able to come back and say, 'Why did you do that? Nicholas Negroponte machinesable The wild, the absurd, the seemingly crazy: this kind of thinking is where new ideas come from ... The people capable of such playful thought carry forward their childish qualities and childhood dreams, applying them in areas where most of us get stuck, victims of our adult seriousness. Staying a child isn't easy. Nicholas Negroponte crazydreamchildren The ability to make big leaps of thought is a common denominator among the originators of breakthrough ideas. Nicholas Negroponte bigscommonideas It's hard to propose a $100 laptop for a world community of kids and then not say in the same breath that you're going to depend on the community to make software for it. Nicholas Negroponte communitykidsworld My advice to graduates is to do anything except what you are trained for. Take that training to a place where it is out of place and stimulate ideas, shake up establishments, and don't take no for an answer. Nicholas Negroponte trainingadviceideas Machines need to talk easily to one another in order to better serve people. Nicholas Negroponte orderpeopleneeds If you take any world problem, any issue on the planet, the solution to that problem certainly includes education. In education, the roadblock is the laptop. Nicholas Negroponte issueslaptopsworld I grew up with free television. Now, it wasn't free, there was these commercials, and so the economic model was driven through commercials and through advertising. Nicholas Negroponte economic-modelsadvertisingtelevision You can see the future best through peripheral vision. Nicholas Negroponte peripheral-visionvision A Wired reader told me once, Get a life, which I read from the back of a yacht in the Aegean, while eating fresh sea urchins and drinking terrific Montrachet. Nicholas Negroponte designdrinkingsea The change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable. Why now? Because the change is also exponential - small differences of yesterday can have suddenly shocking consequences tomorrow. Nicholas Negroponte atomsdifferencesyesterday
