# Dave Barry in Cyberspace - Author: [Dave Barry](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry.md) - Quotes: 7 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-in-cyberspace ## Quotes > The next major advance came soon after the war, with the construction of the first commercially available electronic digital computer, UNIVAC. This device, which contained 20,000 vacuum tubes, occupied 1,500 square feet, and weighed 40 tons; there was also a laptop version weighing 27 tons. UNIVAC was capable of performing 5,000 mathematical calculations per second (Although it did get most of the answers wrong), which, although slow by today's standards, meant it was now possible for a single corporate employee to do something that formerly was impossible- play solitaire on the computer screen. The modern electronic office was born. p. 21 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-in-cyberspace/the-next-major.md) Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md) > We're just beginning to scratch the surface of the capabilities of this incredible tool. Just as the people who were alive when the telephone was invented had no way of knowing that the new device would someday make it possible for virtually every person on Earth, regardless of physical location, to be interrupted at dinner, so are we fundamentally ignorant of the ways in which the computer will ultimately change our lives. We cannot see the future; we do not know what lies around the next bend on the Information Superhighway; we cannot predict where, ultimately, the Computer Revolution will take us. All we know for certain is that, when we finally get there, we don't have enough RAM. p. 209 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-in-cyberspace/were-just-beginning.md) Topics: [the future](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-future.md) > Clearly, nobody was going to stand in the way of this amazing new technology. But because of the extremely high cost and phenomenal inaccuracy of early computers, the only customer for them was the federal government. In 1890, for the first time, the government used computing machines to conduct the census; it was completed in a record two months, and it yielded much valuable information, including the startling fact that the United States had only twelve residents, all of them named "Earl A. Snepp." > > As you would expect, when the federal income tax was enacted in 1913, the Internal Revenue Service quickly embraced the computer. The model used by the IRS was a simple yet effective device that employed a bank of electrically charged nails and a series of cardboard cards with various patterns of holes punched in them; when the nails were pressed down onto a card, they passed through the holes and formed a complete electrical circuit by piercing the naked bodies of taxpayers who had been summoned for audits. p. 20 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-in-cyberspace/clearly-nobody-was.md) Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md) > Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-in-cyberspace/buying-the-right.md) Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md) > It was the ancient Egyptians who first figured out that numbers could, if you added and subtracted them, be used to form mathematics; this made it possible, for the first time, to build the pyramids as well as keep score in bowling. p. 16 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-in-cyberspace/it-was-the.md) Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md) > But it was not until World War II that the U.S. government began to unleash the true power of this technology, when our intelligence forces first employed computers to break enemy codes. Probably the most famous example concerns a top-secret cable sent from the Japanese military high command to Japan's ambassador in Washington on December 3, 1941. The cable, intercepted by U.S. agents, read: > > E-WAY ILL-WAY ATTACK-AY EARL-PAY ARBOR-HAY > > -TOKYO > > This cable was immediately fed into the U.S. War Department's top-secret code-breaking computer, code-named CODEBREAKER, which consisted of thousands of interconnected electronic switches, or "relays." Unlike human intelligence analysts, CODEBREAKER was able to work on the problem nonstop, 24 hours a day, never taking a coffee break (Although it did go to the bathroom four times), until finally, in March of 1944, it gave up. Before it quit, however, CODEBREAKER was able to correctly identify "Tokyo" as "a city in Asia"- information that was to prove vital in the war effort. p. 20 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-in-cyberspace/but-it-was.md) Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md) > The first human beings didn't need computers, because they had no numbers. This was a big problem for parents, because they had no way to control their children ("You kids stop that! I mean it! I'm going to count to... um... to... YOU KIDS STOP THAT!") p. 15 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-in-cyberspace/the-first-human.md) Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md)