Clifford Stoll Quotes

Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not understanding, Understanding is not wisdom.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

Computers in classrooms are the filmstrips of the 1990s.

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