Joseph Weizenbaum - Collected Quotes

"A higher-level formal language is an abstract machine." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation", 1976)

"A theory is, of course, not merely any grammatically correct text that uses a set of terms somehow symbolically related to reality. It is a systematic aggregate of statements of laws. Its content, its very value as theory, lies at least as much in the structure of the interconnections that relate its laws to one another, as in the laws themselves." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)

"Computers make possible an entirely new relationship between theories and models. I have already said that theories are texts. Texts are written in a language. Computer languages are languages too, and theories may be written in them. Indeed, for the present purpose we need not restrict our attention to machine languages or even to the kinds of 'higher-level' languages we have discussed. We may include all languages, specifically also natural languages, that computers may be able to interpret. The point is precisely that computers do interpret texts given to them, in other words, that texts determine computers' behavior. Theories written in the form of computer programs are ordinary theories as seen from one point of view." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)

"Machines, when they operate properly, are not merely law abiding; they are embodiments of law. To say that a specific machine is 'operating properly' is to assert that it is an embodiment of a law we know and wish to apply. We expect an ordinary desk calculator, for example, to be an embodiment of the laws of arithmetic we all know." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)

"Man is not a machine, [...] although man most certainly processes information, he does not necessarily process it in the way computers do. Computers and men are not species of the same genus. [...] No other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms. [...] However much intelligence computers may attain, now or in the future, theirs must always be an intelligence alien to genuine human problems and concerns." (Joesph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, 1976)

"Programming systems can, of course, be built without plan and without knowledge, let alone understanding, of the deep structural issues involved, just as houses, cities, systems of dams, and national economic policies can be similarly hacked together. As a system so constructed begins to get large, however, it also becomes increasingly unstable. When one of its subfunctions fails in an unanticipated way, it may be patched until the manifest trouble disappears. But since there is no general theory of the whole system, the system itself can be only a more or less chaotic aggregate of subsystems whose influence on one another's behavior is discoverable only piecemeal and by experiment. The hacker spends part of his time at the console piling new subsystems onto the structure he has already built - he calls them 'new features' - and the rest of his time in attempts to account for the way in which substructures already in place misbehave. That is what he and the computer converse about." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)

"The aim of the model is of course not to reproduce reality in all its complexity. It is rather to capture in a vivid, often formal, way what is essential to understanding some aspect of its structure or behavior." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)

"The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)

"The connection between a model and a theory is that a model satisfies a theory; that is, a model obeys those laws of behavior that a corresponding theory explicitly states or which may be derived from it. [...] Computers make possible an entirely new relationship between theories and models. [...] A theory written in the form of a computer program is [...] both a theory and, when placed on a computer and run, a model to which the theory applies." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)

"There is a distinction between physically embodied machines, whose ultimate function is to transduce energy or deliver power, and abstract machines. i.e., machines that exist only as ideas. The laws which the former embody must be a subset of the laws that govern the real world. The laws that govern the behavior of abstract machines are not necessarily so constrained. One may, for example, design an abstract machine whose internal signals are propagated among its components at speeds greater than the speed of light, in clear violation of physical law. The fact that such a machine cannot actually be built does not prohibit the exploration of its behavior." (Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation" , 1976)