Neil Gershenfeld
Fungible goods in economics can be extended and traded. So, half as much grain is half as much useful, but half a baby or half a computer is less useful than a whole baby or a whole computer, and we've been trying to make computers that work that way.Collection: Computers
Computer science is one of the worst things that ever happened to either computers or to science.Collection: Computers
Give ordinary people the right tools, and they will design and build the most extraordinary things.Collection: People
Uncertainty is intrinsic to the process of finding out what you don't know, not a weakness to avoid.Collection: Weakness
The real opportunity is to harness the inventive power of the world to locally design and produce solutions to local problems.Collection: Real
For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork.Collection: Smart
Chaos has come to be associated with the study of anything complex, but, in fact, the mathematical techniques are directly applicable only to simple systems that appear to be complex.Collection: Simple
There is so much blandness and grayness out there, people want to be able to say "it's mine." They want to customize their cars like they customize a jeans jacket.Collection: Jeans