Life & Wisdom Quote by Adam Osborne

Osborne’s line lands because it punctures a stubbornly comforting myth: that technology is a moral upgrade. The joke is mechanical but the critique is human. Computers don’t remove error; they remove friction. They turn “oops” into “oops, scaled,” swapping slow, local blunders for rapid, system-wide ones. In a single beat, he reframes automation from guardian angel to accelerant.

The intent isn’t anti-computer so much as anti-complacency. “People think” sets up a familiar delusion: if the machine is precise, the outcome must be correct. Osborne yanks the focus back to inputs, assumptions, and incentives - the messy parts we’d rather outsource. The subtext: most mistakes aren’t arithmetic. They’re conceptual. Bad categories, sloppy requirements, overconfident forecasts, misunderstood users. A computer faithfully executes the wrong idea with stunning efficiency.

Context matters. Osborne came up in the early personal-computing era, when computers were marketed as clean, rational tools that would streamline office life and tame complexity. His quip reads like an early warning about digitizing bureaucracy: when you computerize a flawed process, you don’t fix it, you formalize it. The same dynamic shows up today in spreadsheets that launder dubious numbers into authority, in auto-filled forms that propagate wrong data, in software deployments that ship bugs to millions before lunch.

It’s also a cultural jab at the way “computerized” became shorthand for “trustworthy.” Osborne’s punchline restores the uncomfortable truth: speed is not accuracy, and convenience is not wisdom.