“So whether information represents one man's sentimental archive, the accumulating knowledge base of the human-machine civilization, or the mind files stored in our brains, what can we conclude about the ultimate longevity of software? The answer is simply this: Information lasts only so long as someone cares about it. The conclusion that I've come […] is that there is no set of hardware and software standards existing today, nor any likely to come along, that will provide any reasonable level of confidence that the stored information will still be accessible […] decades from now.”

— Ray Kurzweil

Source: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005), p. 329

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

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Ray Kurzweil 40

Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist 1948

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Italo Calvino book Six Memos for the Next Millennium

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“Sun is one of many US companies that file software patents regularly, the reason we file software patents regularly is the same reason that Americans buy guns. Americans buy guns, because Americans buy guns. American corporations file software patents because American corporations file software patents.”

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“Although many philosophers used to dismiss the relevance of neuroscience on grounds that what mattered was “the software, not the hardware”, increasingly philosophers have come to recognize that understanding how the brain works is essential to understanding the mind.”

Patricia Churchland (1943) philosopher

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“Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware-software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.”

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“This is a software monopoly but at least it was written by people who care about security, so it's not like Microsoft's monopoly.”

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