“My first impulse, when presented with any spanking-new piece of computer hardware, is to imagine how it will look in ten years’ time, gathering dust under a card table in a thrift shop. And it probably will.”

—  William Gibson , book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"My Obsession," Wired, issue 7.01. 1999.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "My first impulse, when presented with any spanking-new piece of computer hardware, is to imagine how it will look in te…" by William Gibson?
William Gibson photo
William Gibson 117
American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder … 1948

Related quotes

Benoît Mandelbrot photo

“The extraordinary surprise that my first pictures provoked is unlikely to be continued. Many people saw them fifteen years ago, ten years ago. Now children see it on their computers when the computers do nothing else. The surprise is not there.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

Segment 144
Peoples Archive interview
Context: The extraordinary surprise that my first pictures provoked is unlikely to be continued. Many people saw them fifteen years ago, ten years ago. Now children see it on their computers when the computers do nothing else. The surprise is not there. The shock of novelty is not there. Therefore the unity that the shock of novelty, surprise, provided to all these activities will not continue. People will know about fractals earlier and earlier, more and more progressively. I think that the best future to expect and perhaps also the best future to hope for, is that fractal ideas will remain either as a peripheral or as a central tool in very many fields.

Elon Musk photo

“Imagine creating a huge software program that can only be tested in little pieces on a computer that is slightly different from what it is supposed to run on. However, when you do run it as a whole on the actual computer for the first time, it must run almost flawlessly without a single significant bug. When is the last time you saw a software program do that?”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

“I have a new CD; it's in stores, and when you have a CD in stores, you have to do in-store appearances, and if nobody shows up, I just pretend like I'm shopping. That's how I shop; I sit behind a table with a pen.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

“When a man tells me he's going to put all his cards on the table, I always look up his sleeve.”

Лесли Хор-Белиша (1893–1957)
David Mitchell photo

“Patience's design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not during the course of play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins. How pointless is that?”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", p. 368
Cloud Atlas (2004), The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (Part 2)

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“He (the photographer) has practically created a new thing out of materials gathered from nature; upon a foundation of fact he has allowed his imagination to build up an entirely fictitious scene, and the truth of the effect will depend upon how far his perceptions have been trained by studying nature at various times, so as to know how things might look under certain circumstances.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 78

Nicholas Metropolis photo

“Most of us have grown so blase about computer developments and capabilities — even some that are spectacular — that it is difficult to believe or imagine there was a time when we suffered the noisy, painstakingly slow, electromechanical devices that chomped away on punched cards.”

Nicholas Metropolis (1915–1999) Greek American physicist

The beginning of the Monte Carlo method, published by [Necia Grant Cooper, Roger Eckhardt, Nancy Shera, From cardinals to chaos: reflections on the life and legacy of Stanislaw Ulam, CUP Archive, 1989, 0521367344, 125]

Ward Cunningham photo

“When I was at Tek, I was frustrated that computer hardware was being improved faster than computer software. I wanted to invent some software that was completely different, that would grow and change as it was used. That’s how wiki came about.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

"Startup mines for riches in collaboration software" in The Portland Tribune (7 March 2008) http://www.portlandtribune.com/rethinking/story.php?story_id=120430910578805900

“Well, my mother and I were discussing how my father left when I was nine months old, and then she remarried and divorced again. I feel like I had blocked out that part of my childhood. I went back with her trying to piece it all back together. I was looking at it through 46 year-old eyes and thinking it was basically ten years of bullshit.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Iris Covet Book https://iriscovetbook.com/exclusive-erika-jayne/ (2018)

Suzanne Collins photo

“"Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven't looked pretty?" I say.
"It must be. The sensation's completely new. How have you managed it all these years?"”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss and Finnick, p. 316
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Related topics