Email of 28 May 1987 https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/distributed-system.txt
As quoted in Teresa K. Attwood, Stephen R. Pettifer, David Thorne (26 September 2016), Bioinformatics Challenges at the Interface of Biology and Computer Science: Mind the Gap, pages: 266–, publisher: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN: 978-0-470-03548-1
As quoted in Teresa K. Attwood, Stephen R. Pettifer, David Thorne (26 September 2016), Bioinformatics Challenges at the Interface of Biology and Computer Science: Mind the Gap, pages: 266–, publisher: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN: 978-0-470-03548-1
“
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
— Leslie Lamport
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable." in the context of "Email of 28 May 1987 https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/distributed-system.txt
As quoted in Teresa K. Attwood, Stephen R. Pettifer, David Thorne (26 September 2016), Bioinformatics Challenges at the Interface of Biology and Computer Science: Mind the Gap, pages: 266–, publisher: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN: 978-0-470-03548-1" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Leslie Lamport" (Quotes)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
About Leslie Lamport
Leslie Lamport (born February 7, 1941) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. Lamport is best known for his seminal work in distributed systems, and as the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX and the author of its first manual. Lamport was the winner of the 2013 Turing Award for imposing clear, well-defined coherence on the seemingly chaotic behavior of distributed computing systems, in which several autonomous computers communicate with each other by passing messages. He devised important algorithms and developed formal modeling and verification protocols that improve the quality of real distributed systems. These contributions have resulted in improved correctness, performance, and reliability of computer systems.
About Leslie Lamport
Leslie Lamport (born February 7, 1941) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. Lamport is best known for his seminal work in distributed systems, and as the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX and the author of its first manual. Lamport was the winner of the 2013 Turing Award for imposing clear, well-defined coherence on the seemingly chaotic behavior of distributed computing systems, in which several autonomous computers communicate with each other by passing messages. He devised important algorithms and developed formal modeling and verification protocols that improve the quality of real distributed systems. These contributions have resulted in improved correctness, performance, and reliability of computer systems.
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