With 2009, and the decade, drawing to a close, we’ve trawled back over a year’s worth of IT-related quotes to find just which ones really stood out, for the right or wrong reasons.
“In 2010, IT needs to step up and boldly announce to the world, “We have value.” IT is being held hostage by misguided attitudes about the value it can create. It needs to be like the young Caesar, who told his pirate kidnappers that they needed to double the ransom they were asking.”
Thornton A. May
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10.”
Bill Gates
“If there’s no hardware or software in the cloud we are so screwed. But it’s not water vapour, all it is, is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about? I mean, what do you think Google runs on? Do you think they run on water vapour? I mean, cloud? It’s databases and it’s operating systems and its memory and microprocessors and the internet. But all of a sudden, no it’s none of that, it’s the cloud! What are you talking about?”
Oracle chairman and CEO Larry Ellison
“Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.”
Alvin Toffler, Future Shock.
“After changing our passwords, I tried to pass the incident off to my wife … as a teachable moment. To which she deftly replied, ‘Well, it is not my teachable moment. However, it is our money. No more internet banking for you.”
FBI Director Robert Mueller on being banned from online banking by his wife after a (nearly successful) phishing attack.
“The internet today is an open platform where the demand for websites and services dictates success. You’ve got barriers to entry that are low and equal for all comers. And it’s because the internet is a neutral platform that I can put on this podcast and transmit it over the internet without having to go through some corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship. I don’t have to pay a special charge. But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the internet as we know it. They say they want to create high-speed lanes on the internet and strike exclusive contractual arrangements with internet content-providers for access to those high-speed lanes. Those of us who can’t pony up the cash for these high-speed connections will be relegated to the slow lanes … We can’t have a situation in which the corporate duopoly dictates the future of the internet and that’s why I’m supporting what is called net neutrality.”
Barack Obama
