//store the quotations in arrays quotes = new Array(21); authors = new Array(21); quotes[0] = "The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way."; authors[0] = "Gregory Bateson"; quotes[1] = "One of the most powerful forces in nature is about to come into view in the online medium: the feedback loop ... Feedback loops are what drive evolution..."; authors[1] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[2] = "Where would rock and roll be without feedback?"; authors[2] = "David Gilmour"; quotes[3] = "A system is anything that talks to itself ... We are all steering."; authors[3] = "Kevin Kelly"; quotes[4] = "Its a, a division bell, it divides the yeses from the noes."; authors[4] = "David Gilmour"; quotes[5] = "Communication is at the base of ... the most irreversible process accessible to the human mind, the progressive increase of knowledge."; authors[5] = "Ilja Prigonine"; quotes[6] = "We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message."; authors[6] = "Norbert Wiener"; quotes[7] = "I think myself that, rather like books, music is meant to enter into the brain, well via your ears rather than your eyes."; authors[7] = "David Gilmour"; quotes[8] = "As communicators and as communicatees, about all that we can do, as Norbert Wiener suggests ... is to try to create islands of decreasing entropy,"; authors[8] = "J.C. Merrel, John Lee, and E.J. Friedlander"; quotes[9] = "I really like The Division Bell myself, although I wouldn't say it's an immediate album. You have to put a bit of work in to get out of it the riches that are there."; authors[9] = "David Gilmour"; quotes[10] = "Everything must be made as simple as possible; but not simpler."; authors[10] = "Albert Einstein"; quotes[11] = "I feel that the agenda of life's important issues has moved from novelists to science writers, because they know more."; authors[11] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[12] = "In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. That is a rather startling thing to say, but it is our conclusion..."; authors[12] = "J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor (1968)"; quotes[13] = "It was an initial idea that we had for The Division Bell. To do with boats ... It is called 'The Boatman'."; authors[13] = "Storm Thorgerson"; quotes[14] = "The dissemination of any scientific secret whatever is merely a matter of time..."; authors[14] = "Norbert Wiener"; quotes[15] = "Always things are down to how you control them, and whether you're controlling them, and not the other way around..."; authors[15] = "David Gilmour"; quotes[16] = "Feedback loops are the most powerful process we know of, being responsible for everything from guitar howlround to the evolution of life."; authors[16] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[17] = "The progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe."; authors[17] = "Stephen Hawking"; quotes[18] = "Organism is opposed to chaos, to disintegration, to death, as message is to noise."; authors[18] = "Norbert Wiener"; quotes[19] = "We have thus established the basis in man for the simplest element in his communication: ... the communication of man with man by the immediate use of language, when two men are face to face with one another ... we have many means to carry this tool of communication to the ends of the earth."; authors[19] = "Norbert Wiener"; quotes[20] = "There is no problem so complicated that you can't find a very simple answer to it if you look at it the right way."; authors[20] = "Douglas Adams"; //calculate a random index index = Math.floor(Math.random() * quotes.length); //display the quotation document.write("
\n"); document.write("
" + "\"" + quotes[index] + "\"\n"); document.write("
" + "
-- " + authors[index] + "\n"); document.write("
\n"); //done