The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

…you need to have a goal in mind that transcends the profit motive. That’s the only way you’ll be able to attract the best and brightest talent.

— Jim Whitehurst and Gary Hamel, The Open Organization

…every day we wake up and collectively make a world together; but which one of us, left to our own devices, would ever decide they wanted to make a world like this one?”

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs

the assumption that any culture has a monopoly on moral truth or on clear moral thinking strikes me as somewhere between naïve and ludicrous.

— Michael-John Turp, Who’s to Say?

1952, the Univac was at work processing the 1950 census with a complex program developed by about eight programmers. Other machines were doing chemical dynamics, neutron diffusion calculations, missile performance calculations, etc. Assemblers, relocating linkers and loaders, floating-point interpretive systems, etc. were in routine use. By 1955 people were building 50 to 100 man-year business programs. By 1956 General Electric had in operation a payroll system in its Louisville appliance plant with more than 80,000 words of program. By 1957, the SAGE ANFSQ/7 air defense computer had been running two years, and a 75,000 instruction communications-based, fail-safe-duplexed real-time system was in operation in 30 sites.

— Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month