What was the context of Queen Juliana's "I can't understand it" quote?
score:7
Well, this appears to predate most of the 80's thoughts. The 60's versions of this quote give us a location at least, that she gave this quote while watching a demonstration of either an 'electronic computer', or an 'electronic data processing machine'. The oldest report I find is 1958:
Personally, I share the opinion of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands who, watching the demonstration of an electronic data-processing machine, said, “I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it.”
The quote appears a couple of times during the sixties:
Above him on the lintel of the machine, was the proud motto of the National Programer's Union, originally a remark by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands: "I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people...
World's Best Science Fiction - Page 79 -1965
and
Even Queen Juliana of the Netherlands voiced the same objection when she was watching a demonstration of an electronic computer at an Amsterdam exhibition. "I can't understand it," she complained "I can't even understand the people who understand it."
Financial Executive - Volume 35 - Page 24, 1967
(All emphasis mine)
So we can see this event occurred sometime in the late 50's to early sixties. Since these are all snippit view search entries, (I can't verfy for sure that the dates listed on periodicals aren't first publication dates.) The statement seems to have occurred during some sort of demonstration taking place in Amsterdam, pre 1958 if the first publication date is accurate. There are a couple of more entries,
- Catholic World, 1965
- Books and Bookmen - Volume 12 - Page 11- 1966
which basically repeat the same info, that the quote was about computers she was observing at a demonstration.
Upvote:0
She was talking about computers, and it would likely be in the early 1980s when "personal" computers became popular.
Upvote:3
The best I could find with a fair bit of searching was your same Schmitt reference from 1988. It was introduced there as "was heard to exclaim". The implication there is that this wasn't a prepared remark, but rather a conversational one.
If the part about it being something she said in a conversation is accurate, there can never really be a definitive source (or even form) for the quote. It was not said in a venue where one would expect it to have been authoritatively recorded. So it seems quite likely that is the best you are going to find.
And then of course there's the likelyhood it isn't accurate. Schmitt was just using it as a colorful anecdote, not as a central part of his argument that had to rely on bulletproof sourcing. At the time it would have been said, Schmitt was an executive at GE (or before that, a researcher), so it seems unlikely he was moving in the kind of social circles to have even heard this second-hand. On the other hand, as director of the GE R&D Center until 1986, it seems quite likely he was exposed to the Unix "fortune" program.
The 1987 "fortune" find shows the other form of the quote was at least co-existent with Schmitt's. So in the absence of any other earlier written source he could have gotten it from, it seems most likely Schmitt read it from "fortune", and inserted "computers" because he was using one of those newfangled computer thingies when he read it, so he assumed that's what she was talking about.
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