“I didn't know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivett...” — Mona Simpson Quote

I didn't know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.

We go to college, live together or marry, and have kids - often with little more thought to the daily routines of raising children than our grandparents gave them, when women by and large stayed at home.

I suppose 'My Hollywood' is only as politically meaningful as it is deeply inside the least powerful of its characters. I wanted it to reveal scenes of subtle exploitation, odd instances of accidental power and challenges to decency specific to its time, but also impulses of generosity that transcend our particular era's messes.

Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

Shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software with the worst of free software.

Computers used to petrify me before I figured it was just a matter of getting used to them.

Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.

Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt.