It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.

--- Eugene Wigner, quoted in Physics Today, July 1993 according to quote-wise.com

Found via a letter to New Scientist from Richard Cragg (13 Aug 2016, issue #3086):

Thank you for Regina Peldszus's review of Samuel Arbesman's book warning that we have reached the stage where very few “experts” really understand the complexity of the software systems they have installed to control critical parts of our infrastructure (23 July, p 42). This reminds me of the lament of Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner: “It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.”

It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.

--- Eugene Wigner, quoted in Physics Today, July 1993 according to quote-wise.com

Found via a letter to New Scientist from Richard Cragg (13 Aug 2016, issue #3086):

Thank you for Regina Peldszus's review of Samuel Arbesman's book warning that we have reached the stage where very few “experts” really understand the complexity of the software systems they have installed to control critical parts of our infrastructure (23 July, p 42). This reminds me of the lament of Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner: “It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.”

"Telecoms is fundamentally the business of multiplexing for profit"

--- Martin Geddes, in his newsletter 11/22/2012, "Future of Comms - Our crisis of certainty‏"

Quote in context:

What networks do is to translocate information to enable computation to happen. An ideal network does what Turing described: instant and perfect translocation.

Real networks are never ideal.

What real networks do is to lose and delay data, and the only freedom of action they have is to allocate this impairment in more or less damaging ways. Thus whilst we have had a theory of computability for over half a century, we have (thus far) lacked a theory of translocatability.

. . .

Telecoms is fundamentally the business of statistical multiplexing for profit. The infrastructure could be built locally and rented. The services can be provided by “over the top” players. Telcos sit in the multiplexing middle, and mediate between variable instantaneous supply and demand.

"It's 1946 in cyber[warfare]"

--- James Mulvenon, a founding member of the Cyber Conflict Studies Association, a Washington DC nonprofit, quoted on page 2 of Mark Clayton's feature for the Christian Science Monitor, March 2, 2011, The new cyber arms race. See below for another great quote, by Mike McConnell, director of US national intelligence 2007-2009.

From the article:

"Here's the problem – it's 1946 in cyber," says James Mulvenon, a founding member of the Cyber Conflict Studies Association, a nonprofit group in Washington. "So we have these potent new weapons, but we don't have all the conceptual and doctrinal thinking that supports those weapons or any kind of deterrence. Worse, it's not just the US and Soviets that have the weapons – it's millions and millions of people around the world that have these weapons."

In the new cyber world order, the conventional big powers won't be the only ones carrying the cannons. Virtually any nation – or terrorist group or activist organization – with enough money and technical know-how will be able to develop or purchase software programs that could disrupt distant computer networks.

And the US, because it's so wired, is more vulnerable than most big powers to this new form of warfare. It's the price the country may one day pay for being an advanced and open society.

"If the nation went to war today, in a cyberwar, we would lose," Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence from 2007 to 2009, told a US Senate committee a year ago. "We're the most vulnerable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose."