Quotes of the year: From Steve Jobs' impact to why architects are the Britneys of IT

The best tech soundbites from 2011...

As another tech-fuelled year draws to a close, silicon.com's Natasha Lomas looks back through the archives for the soundbites that made an impact in 2011...

January

"It's a raindrop in a thunderstorm. We see over 90,000 new unique samples of malware every day and 99.999 per cent of that is for Windows"
- Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, deflating the mobile malware hype

"Just as I wouldn't insist on someone using a quill pen with ink out of an inkwell to make their notes, I don't see why in this day and age they have to use paper to make their notes"
- Greg Knight MP, chairman of the procedure committee, agitating for iPad use to be sanctioned in the House of Commons

"It's common knowledge that the human brain is incapable of understanding the career implications of electronic communications prior to the send button being pressed"
- Paul Haley, director of IT at the University of Aberdeen, warning on the dangers of tweeting before thinking

"If you want to download, stream and watch video clips, save that stuff for your home broadband"
- T-Mobile blog post giving some rather surprising advice to users of the mobile network

"If Apple made a car it'd be the best car in the world"
- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, imagining an Apple automobile in an interview with silicon.com

February

"Any company run by unknowing and mechanistic minds is in jeopardy and faces a limited life. Specifically, the pursuance of policies that focus on cost reduction and a continued optimisation of the bottom line just accelerate progress towards sudden death"
- Peter Cochrane, silicon.com columnist, on the potentially fatal costs of slavish pursuit of efficiency savings

"The first thing you ought to do to generate more entry-level jobs in the UK is to put out a sign saying, 'If you are skilled in IT we will welcome you here'"
- Mike Lynch, CEO of UK software giant Autonomy, with a practical solution to the UK IT skills shortage

"I asked the school what they do in ICT and they said they look at Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel. I was horrified"
- Dr Sue Black, senior research associate with the software systems engineering group at University College London, laying into unimaginative ICT teaching

"Nokia, our platform is burning"
- memo attributed to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, apparently preparing staff to abandon its own efforts to built a next-gen operating system

"Sometimes craziness gives a good return"
- Masayoshi Son, CEO of Japanese mobile operator SoftBank, telling mobile operators that desperate times can reward taking crazy measures

"If all of a sudden you're aware of other people's thoughts and sensations, and they are aware of yours, then the boundaries of the self can start to dissolve - and what you could get is a kind of technological schizophrenia"
- science writer Michael Chorost explaining the concept explored in his book the World Wide Mind in an interview with silicon.com

March

"We do not have to build in more and more but rather to simplify. We saw this with Apple... who managed to change an entire industry - and that is what we want to do"
- SAP co-chairman Jim Hagemann Snabe coveting the ways of Cupertino

"The tablet PC did not invent the modern tablet PC. The tablet PC crashed and burned. The modern tablet PC is the iPad"
- Apple CEO Steve Jobs dismisses the pre-iPad tablet era

"Apple understands desire"
- Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps succinctly summing up Apple's appeal

"I am grateful to my noble friends for making me feel, for the first time in a while, that I am a member of the younger generation"
- Lord Lucas reliving his youth with the help of Apple's iPad

"Databases will be created about your microscopic consumption inside your own household and this could mean, for example, that somebody could build a statistical model which would have a pretty good idea, two years before you might know, you were going to get divorced"
- Caspar Bowden, chief privacy adviser for Microsoft's worldwide technology office, voicing fears about smart meters and privacy

"There is the prospect of non-carbon life"
- Peter Cochrane, silicon.com columnist, blogging about ET