W.Daniel Hillis Quotes

• If you hear an expert talking about the Internet and saying it [does] this, or it will do that, you should treat it with the same skepticism that you might treat the comments of an economist about the economy or a weatherman about the weather.

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in Economy

  Tags in Internet, Economist

• Attitude of only taking what you need … was actually kind of built into the protocols of the Internet itself.

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in Attitude

  Tags in Internet

• People are mostly focused on defending the computers on the Internet, and there’s been surprisingly little attention to defending the Internet itself as a communications medium. [We] need to pay some more attention to that, because it’s actually kind of fragile.

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in Technology

  Tags in People, Dependency, Internet

• What we need is a plan B … independent of the Internet. [It] doesn’t necessarily have to have the performance of the Internet, but the police department has to be able to call up the fire department.

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Internet, Independent

• [Language is] really a pretty amazing invention if you think about it. Here I have a very complicated, messy, confused idea in my head. I’m sitting here making grunting sounds and hopefully constructing a similar messy, confused idea in your head that bears some analogy to it.

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ideas, Invention, Language

• We’re at a point in time which is analogous to when single-celled organisms were turning into multi-celled organisms. So we’re the amoebas.

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Organism

• If transportation technology was moving along as fast as microprocessor technology, then the day after tomorrow I would be able to get in a taxi cab and be in Tokyo in 30 seconds.

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in Technology

  Tags in Tomorrow

• Your genome knows much more about your medical history than you do.

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in History

• A human body is a conversation going on, both within the cells and between the cells, and they’re telling each other to grow and to die; when you’re sick, something’s gone wrong with that conversation

  W.Daniel Hillis

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human Being, Conversation

W.Daniel Hillis (9)

Birth:	25th September, 1956
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Computer Scientist, Investor

Related Authors

• Hal Abelson
• Jefferson Han
• Alan Mathison Turing
• Gordon Moore
• Jim Allchin
• Nicholas Negroponte
• Mikhail Botvinnik
• Dave Parnas
• Eric Horvitz
• James Martin

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 22nd November

Births

• 1744 - Abigail Adams
• 1932 - Robert Vaughan
• 1932 - Robert Francis Vaughn
• 1782 - Sophie Swetchine
• 1898 - Wiley Post

Deaths

• 1774 - Robert Clive
• 1992 - Sterling Price Holloway Jr.
• 1943 - Lorenz Hart
• 1902 - Walter Reed
• 2011 - Svetlana Alliluyeva