“I think it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun
in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course,
the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we
began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as though we
really were responsible for the successful, error-free, perfect use of these
machines. I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them,
setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. Fun comes
in many ways. Fun comes in making a discovery, proving a theorem, writing
a program, breaking a code. Whatever form or sense it comes in I hope the
field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we
don’t become missionaries. What you know about computing other people
will learn. Don’t feel as though the key to successful computing is only in
your hands. What’s in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability
to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you
can make it more.”