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Linus says Linux is fun
tknockers writes
"News.com has a story about how Linus describes
Linux as being "fun". He even goes on to say that in 150
years our lives will only be motivated by fear of
boredom. "
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The question many you have to ask is: Are there tasks which exist which are wholly worth doing, and neccessary for society to function, yet no one finds them interesting or fun?
How about proper documentation and user interface coding for Linux apps? (half serious) Certainly no robot is going to do that. Better examples are perhaps things like taking out the garbage, policing high schools, and having sex with your wife.
I get a little antsy when I read about the wonders of this wonderful star-trek like society where everyone does what's fun, no one hates their job, and boredom is the only enemy.
You know, everything ceases to be fun and interesting after awhile. What happens then? You just abandon your task and leave everyone who depended on you wanting? Where's responsibility?
Let's say you found the ZNOME project, an extension to GNOME. It's the hottest thing, and you are one of the hottest coders, the lead maintainer, and pretty much responsible for the success of the project and its management.
Then, you decide you are bored of it, and quit all of a sudden? Sure, other people can take your place, but you still do damage in your wake. If Linus, Miguel, Rasterman, etc all totally abandoned their projects to get more interesting research jobs, would none of you feel let down or complain?
There comes a point in every project, like after 80% of it is done, and that last 20% of polish seems to be like the last mile in a marathon. It's boring sometimes, it hurts, you wish you could do something else.
Are we heading to a society where no on can be depended on to finish a task because it might become boring, irritating, or uninteresting?
Perhaps this is the WHOLE ESSENCE OF Open Source.
I get a flash of energy, I feel like coding up the 513th CD Player applet, this time using GTK and XML for some strange reason. I get it 70% done to where it's workable, but then I get bored and release it without documentation or any usability and hope someone else is interested enough to finish the work for me?
It seems like the MTV Attention Deficit Order society to me.
I would have to point out to everyone that, hey, there's a world outside the industrialized nations (hell, considering the /. demographics, outside the USA, I'd say). Where do third world countries fit into this whole story?
The economical abundance of the industrialized countries, and the concommitant techonological advances, like it or not have been built on the exploitation and pauperization of the third world.
The driving motor for technological advance, in general (apart from the possible intentions of individual inventors) has not been a desire to make people have more time for entertainment, but rather to diminish the wage costs of production. Yes, the reason the money for developing and building industrial robots has appeared is not because the industry wants laid-off workers to have fun in the free time the robots create for them...
And don't get me started in the american "entertainment" industry.
All this is just an egotistical "I just wanna have fun" fantasy, with no concern for reality. In fact, I think that a society where everyone could just have fun would take a lot of work to set up and maintain, and not the kind of work doable by a machine. Yeah, for example, can anyone here volunteer to learn Yoruba and translate all the Linux documentation into it, so Yoruba speakers get the same opportunities for fun we do? Care to coordinate the translations for the thousands of langauges found in the world? Hell, for that matter, care to coordinate translations of all documentation in your system for all languages spoken in the USA?
BTW, try reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, you might find it interesting. It describes a society somewhat along "entertainment" lines (although people still work).
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Linus doesn't explicitly state that we'll all have so much free time in the future that we'll be bored. And that's a good thing too because it's not true. If we look back at the labor saving devices invented in the last 200 years, it boggles the mind. Yet today we still mostly work for a living. Many people work longer hours than ever as companies shed as many employees as the possibly can. The fact is that labor saving devices don't exist in a vacuum. They are part of the fabric of our society. Computerization both changes society and is moulded by society.
I highly recommend the essay Speeding Towards Meaninglessness: Why Labor Saving Devices Don't Save Time. It's part of Steve Talbott's NETFUTURE site, which I've recommended on this forum before. Steve is a pseudo-luddite and an enviro-weenie who worships primitive cultures, but he and his contributors do have a lot to add to our understanding of the affect of technology on human existencs.
One might argue that if people are no longer struggling to survive and as such they will gravitate towards "non-boring" jobs... then you might arrive at the conclusion that open-source is the first of a long series of social changes which will be taking place in both mainstream, and computing culture.
However, the fundamental logic flaw here is.. event A is not linked to event B. People may not be dependent on "surviving" with a job.. but that does not necessarily mean that as a result, they will seek out non-boring jobs. There may be a group of people that seek more money, and will sacrifice personal satisfaction at the job to get it.
Linus makes a good point, but don't take it at face value.
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I'm sorry but this article, and the philosophy it espouses is dangerous.
It's okay when read in a reflective mood, "just to keep things in perspective". But taking it serious would be foolish.
Primitive cultures were and are NOT peaceful idyllic communities.
They are disease ridden hell pits of starvation and oppression. Take some time and look into the conditions in which lower class India live. The cow dung used to cook emits poison toxins which slowly kill as they heat. Furthermore if you want to see real inquity, between sexes and ages that's your place.
I'll take this 'hi-tech' society anyday. Where I can seek out the few like minded people that exist in this world, where I can spend hours everyday experimenting and creating, exercising my mind. After considering the alternatives I think it's a pretty good way to live.
There was quite a bit more to the panel than you gather from the news.com article. Linus spent much of his time providing examples for "Linus's Law" which said that the only three things that motivate people are 1. Survival (food, shelter, etc...), 2. Social Needs (communication, relationships, sex), and 3. Entertainment. He then pointed out how many things move from a survival stage, to social, and then eventually entertainment, as do societies (e.g. the romans). He said something like "First you worry about surviving, then about your social communications with others, and then you end up partying all night." But he wasn't the only interesting one on the panel - there were a few others including Prof. Castells who talked about the need for worrying about the application for technology both in schools and in society at large, instead of just dumping it there and expecting the best to come out of it. He gave an example of how a good technology such as email introduced in the wrong way to a society can be turned in the wrong direction easily. He also stressed that schools shouldn't just be wired, but provide a system for using the internet that they're connected to. Overall an interesting talk, but its focus was more on society than on technology, and my feeling was that there were a lot of folks there just for Linus's talk.
Linus is an UberHacker and deserves his place among the elite of 1990's info tech.
Where sociology is concerned, he's an amateur. His "insights" aren't exactly revelatory.
People are still working in jobs they hate to feed their kids. The world's still full of hate, war, and suffering.
Many rock stars freely dispense social and political opinions. Too many people lap thes up uncritically.
I'll listen to Linus talk about computers until the sun goes red giant. But when he ends up on the Tonight show dispensing opinions about other stuff, I'm reaching for the remote.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.