“In my experience, you assert control over a computer—show it who’s the boss—by making it do something unique. That means programming it….If you devote a couple of hours to programming a new machine, you’ll feel better about it ever afterward” —Michael Crichton, Electronic Life, 1983

“Fear of enslavement by our creations is an old fear, and a literary tritism. But I fear something worse and much more likely—that some time after 2020, our machines will become intelligent, evolve rapidly, and end up treating us as pets. We can at least take comfort that there is one worse fate—becoming food—that mercifully is highly unlikely.” —Paul Saffo, September 2006