Latest David Gelernter Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• We still have books because they are so brilliantly suited to the way human beings absorb information and at their best, they are among the most beautiful things we have.

  David Gelernter

  Beautiful, Book, Information

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• The book is a unit and is such a brilliant ergonomic unit.

  David Gelernter

  Book, Brilliant, Units

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• There are great science books that were conceived as books. Feynman's famous introductory lectures in physics, which have a beginning and an end, which are written with style.

  David Gelernter

  Book, Style, Lectures

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• The book is a form in which some of the greatest masterpieces that mankind has ever achieved are expressed.

  David Gelernter

  Book, Form, Mankind

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• Abolishing the book is like abolishing the symphony, or sonata form, or the sonnet, or the wall painting.

  David Gelernter

  Wall, Book, Symphony

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• I think the universities as we know them will be dead in a future years. I'd like to see them replaced by something better, instead of something worse, and it's not clear which way it will go.

  David Gelernter

  Thinking, Years, Way

  Source: bigthink.com

• I would love to see writing taught online because at university like Yale, there are not enough teachers who are able to teach writing well, or in some cases, there are none.

  David Gelernter

  Teacher, Writing, Yale

  Source: bigthink.com

• Similarly for marking exercises, quantitative exercises, maybe not so much in mathematics, but certainly problem sets in physics, chemistry, and engineering and things like that where answers and methods are clear cut, absolutely. I would like to see that done online.

  David Gelernter

  Cutting, Exercise, Engineering

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• There are certain subjects which seem to me can be taught very effectively online, although they aren't.

  David Gelernter

  Taught, Online, Certain

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• At the same time, on the networks, there are thousands of groups that are building lifestreams, or lifestreaming for themselves in their own way. We'd love to see this activity.

  David Gelernter

  Groups, Way, Building

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• In principle the first thing on the stream would be my birth certificate, a little electronic version of that, my parents would put my school records, health records, whatever of their child onto the stream. And the stream continues to flow forward through time.

  David Gelernter

  Children, School, Parent

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• Without commenting on the legal aspects, which I'm not capable of doing, those are lifestreams and there are other companies that have done similar things. That makes me angry personally, not because of the money, but because of the deliberate failure to acknowledge work that we would have made freely available as academics.

  David Gelernter

  Done, Aspect, Made

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• Readable text and authority so that readers know how to spend - no matter how much information there is, I have the same number of minutes in my day, and I need to look to sources that I trust.

  David Gelernter

  Numbers, Needs, Looks

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• I think the print media have failed to make the most of their opportunity. They may all disappear because they are approaching things in the wrong way.

  David Gelernter

  Thinking, Opportunity, Print Media

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• Software unification. So that I no longer care what computing device I pick up, whether it's a laptop or desktop, whether it's one I own or one in a public place, whether it has a small screen or a large screen.

  David Gelernter

  Laptops, Care, Unification

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.