Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 48 " A real friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other. " ―  Jaron Lanier Cited by Lex Fridman in a podcast with  Jaron Lanier: Virtual Reality, Social Media & the Future of Humans and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #218 - YouTube   Another  quote from the VR pioneer on Kara Swisher's Sway podcast about what he thinks of Meta and the Mark Zuckerberg Metaverse demo. It was ... "L ike some megalomaniac took my stuff & filtered it through some weird self-aggrandizement filter. " ―  Jaron Lanier

Quote of the Week 47 " After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back. " ―  Bob Dylan Stated in Dylan's 2004 memoir   Chronicles: Volume One . Triggered by  the use of the quote in Artur Varanda's master thesis The GDPR and Log Pseudonymization . See the paper  Log pseudonymization: Privacy maintenance in practice   for an excerpt of the research results in English.

Quote of the Week 46 " If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there . " ―  Lewis Carroll A paraphrase of an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in  Lewis Carroll 's  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . Triggered by  Thomas Stiehm's  use of the quote in his presentation " Continuous Build and other DevOps anti-patterns, and how to overcome them " (slide 4).

Quote of the Week 45 "I’m smart enough to know that I’m dumb. " ―  Richard Feynman In line with Dunning and Kruger's findings the inverse corollary could be stated as: "I’m dumb enough to think that I’m smart. " That triggers a reference to Mount Stupid as depicted in  Zach Weinersmith 's (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)   chart which according to Chris Barth " features a prominent bump, toward the low end of the knowledge spectrum, where people feel qualified to dish on a given subject, despite their relative lack of wisdom. The name of that bump is Mount Stupid." Source:  https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2475 (Zach Weinersmith) Gunter Dueck has pointed out the similarity between this chart and the Gartner Hype Cycle ... but that's a different story .

Quote of the Week 44 "Continuous is more often than you think. " ―  Mike Roberts Triggered by the use of Roberts ' quote by Dave Farley in his presentation of the " Top 10 Rules For Continuous Integration ". Also cited in the last paragraph "Done Means Released" of Warren Veerasingam's blog article " Found: 7 Lost Principles of Continuous Delivery ".

Quote of the Week 43 "Even the future used to be better in the past. " ―  Karl Valentin "Früher war sogar die Zukunft besser. " ―  Karl Valentin As seen on the menu  of Berggasthof Neureuth .

Quote of the Week 42 "Pr ecision is vanity, recall is sanity. " ―  Martin White Title of a recent blog article by Martin White .   For a lot of use cases in information management and search ("finding all the relevant results"), false positives (as a result of lesser precision) are easier to handle than false negatives (as a result of insufficient recall) as one might not even know these misses exist in the information base (" You don't know what you don't know "). For more information on Type I ("false positive") vs. Type II ("false negative") Errors see for example  Wikipedia .

Quote of the Week 41 " Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts. " ― Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -Périgord Triggered by Harald Schmidt's use of Talleyrand 's quote in a TV discussion earlier this summer.   Most likely a variation of a quote by Voltaire : " Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts. "   " Die Menschen gebrauchen ihren Verstand nur, um ihr Unrecht zu rechtfertigen, und ihre Sprache allein, um ihre Gedanken zu verbergen. "

Quote of the Week 40 " The gurney is the reward. " ― Malapropism I came across this malapropism of the zen proverb and title of the 1987 book " The Journey is the Reward " on Steve Jobs thirty years ago when working for NeXT. The January 1991 issue of MacWorld attributes the origin to Apple employees suggesting alternative company slogans following the company's announcement of the discontinuation of profit sharing.

Quote of the Week 39 " It is by  logic  that we prove , but by  intuition  that we discover.   To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.“ ― Henri Poincaré Triggered by Jay McClelland ’ s use of the first part of the  quote in a recent podcast with Lex Fridman.

Quote of the Week 38 " When the moon reaches fullness, it begins to wane. " ― Sima Qian Triggered by Kai Strittmatter citing another Sima Qian quote in chapter "Das eiserne Haus" of his book " Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur -  Wie China den digitalen Überwachungsstaat aufbaut und uns damit herausfordert "  in German: "Besser als die Zustimmung der Menge:   die Widerrede eines einzigen mutigen Mannes!" Strittmatter's book for the US market: " We Have Been Harmonized - Life in China's Surveillance State "

Quote of the Week 37 " Man can embody truth but he cannot know it." ―  William Butler Yeats   Triggered by the use of the quote in the documentary " Being in the World - On the Subject of the  #Heideggerian  Dasein " which is referenced in the recent research paper " A brief history of AI: how to prevent another winter (a critical review) ".

Quote of the Week 36 " It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. " ― Danish proverb See Quote Investigator for background information. German translation: "Prognosen sind schwierig, besonders wenn sie die Zukunft betreffen." Background information in German .

Quote of the Week 35 " Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills. " ― Arthur Schopenhauer Triggered by  a podcast interview with  Prof. Dr. Dr. Gerhart Roth where he cited the original quote  in German: " Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. " Later  translated as: " Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants. "

Quote of the Week 34 " What's not worth doing is not worth doing well. " ―  Abraham Maslow Triggered by Scott Barry Kaufman's tweet in the context of the promotion of his book " Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization " on a podcast with Jordan B. Peterson. Originally stated in Maslow's book " Maslow on Management " (original title: " Eupsychian Management ") and later referenced in the book  " The Maslow Business Reader " (pg. 17). The complementary statement to the strive for effectiveness and efficiency to be productive : " Do the right things and do them right. " Spending time and resources on the wrong thing is just a waste.  See also: Source:  " Avoid Doing the Wrong things Righter… But, “By What Method?” ".

Quote of the Week 33 " The perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary ." ― Michel Foucault Triggered by Kai Strittmatter citing Foucault  in chapter "Das Auge" of his book " Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur -  Wie China den digitalen Überwachungsstaat aufbaut und uns damit herausfordert "  in German: " Die Perfektion der Macht vermag ihre tatsächliche Ausübung überflüssig zu machen. "

Quote of the Week 32 " It is so easy to be wrong—and to persist in being wrong—when the costs of being wrong are paid by others. " ― Thomas Sowell Triggered by the use of the quote in David Didau's presentation " What if everything you knew about mindsets and resilience was wrong? "  (last slide) where he criticises Carol Dweck's work on the " Mindset " topic (as manifested in her repetitive book).

Quote of the Week 31 "Only dead fish go with the flow." ― Proverb Triggered by an interview with  Prof. Dr. D. Grönemeyer who used this old saying in German: "Nur tote Fische schwimmen mit dem Strom."

Quote of the Week 30 " One cannot not communicate." ― Paul Watzlawick One of the five Axioms of Communication ; also quoted as: "You  cannot not communicate. " Paul Watzlawick was born 100 years ago on July 25, 1921. Triggered by Ursula Moonen's LinkedIn post .   Poster by Erik Spiekermann  on p98a

Quote of the Week 29 "Software doesn’t age like fine wine; it ages like milk.   Software goes bad over time." ― Josh Corman Related quotes: "Code doesn't age like wine, it ages like milk." ― Chris Eng Triggered by Charity Major's use of a variation of the quote   "Software on the shelf doesn't age like wine; it ages like milk." in her  presentation  on Continuous Delivery where she argues that  software should be auto-deployed within 15 minutes after you merge it, with no manual gates.   Photo by Debby Hudson  on Unsplash The use of the full quote by Josh Corman can be found in a 2016 article . A later  blog article  acknowledges prior usage @ Microsoft. The attribution to Chris Eng has been made in a Lenovo presentation  (slide 9) and a CSO Online article  (cited here ). The origin of the quote, however, dates back to at least 2006 when Andy Ozment and Stuart E. Schechter authored a Usenix conference paper titled " Milk or Wi...

Quote of the Week 28 "All perceptions are real, at least to those who own them." ― Joe Folkman Related quotes: "In politics, perception is reality." ― Lee Atwater "Perception is reality. If you are perceived to be something, you might as well be it because that’s the truth in people’s minds." ― Steve Young "Perception is reality, but it may not be actuality, and you have got to be able to keep the difference between that." ― Bill Cowher Triggered by Ron Lichty's use of the quote in many of his  presentations  and the book " Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams " citing Folkman's 1996 book "Turning Feedback into Change!". See also Principle 5 in Folkman's subsequent book " The Power of Feedback ".

Quote of the Week 27 "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." ―  Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (The Leopard / Il Gattopardo) Triggered by Robert Cialdini's use of the quote when promoting the updated edition of his book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" on The Psychology Podcast . The literal translation of the Italian original quote "Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi" is closer to "If we want everything to stay as it is, everything has to change"  "If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change" as discussed here . See also :  > “If you don’t change, time will change you.”

Quote of the Week 26 " Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs. " ―  Bill Gates Source: "No Single Metric Captures Productivity" by Ciera Jaspan, Caitlin Sadowski, Google; Chapter 2  in: Caitlin Sadowski, Thomas Zimmermann, "Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering"  See  my Blog On Innovation  for a summary of key takeaways from the book.

Quote of the Week 25 " Innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas . " ―  UK Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) Source: " Innovate to Accumulate " (1994) Triggered by the inflationary usage of the term " innovation " lacking a universally accepted definition. Or as Graham West already put it back in 1994: "Sadly, the word “innovation”, in recent usage, has become so hackneyed it seriously runs the risk of metamorphosizing into an expression of a doubtful quality." See also my Blog On Innovation article for a collection of alternative definitions of the term.

Quote of the Week 24 " Realize that you are simultaneously everything and nothing ." ―  Ray Dalio First part of one of the many principles Dalio published in his book " Principles " which is available as e-book in the corresponding free app.  See also Dalio's corresponding blog and LinkedIn article .