What's wrong with learning from a computer game? Sure, it's a grossly simplified model, but do you think they just pulled that stuff out of their butts?
Have you actually read much history? Or, more specifically, have you read much on how history is shaped by technology?
History repeats itself because human nature doesn't change all that much. We're basically the same now is when we were tens of thousands of years ago.
What does change is technology. Sure, culture evolves, but how much of that evolution would occur without the technological changes that help it occur? Would popular culture exist without a telecommunications infrastructure? Would suburbia exist without automobiles? Would slavery have ended without the industrial revolution? Would organized religion, democracy, or science, exist without writing? Would we have ever formed cities and nations without agriculture? Get the point?
Most technological advancement, at least up until the formalization of the scientific method, has come from common people, thinking, "there's got to be a better way", whether that person be a blacksmith trying to build a better tool, or a farmer trying to lessen his workload or grow better crops, or a merchant trying to figure out cheaper ways to get goods to market, and so on.
You're probably thinking of how science became a trendy hobby for the wealthy during the Age of Reason. That's when you start see people like Newton, Galileo, etc.
Well, like all monopolies, the music cartel is itself a limiter of opportunities. I don't see how much more moral business is when it uses its political power to stifle and kill upstarts (in a generic sense, refering to the insider deals and mutual back-scratching that goes on in business), or the way it buys off the government in order legistate their power (Sonny Bonehead copyright extension, much of DMCA, tariffs on recording media, etc).
Nobody can argue that the sharing of music online necessarily deprives the music industry (or artists) of any incentive to create music.
That is bullshit. Regardless of how evil the big record companies are, the ability to copy music online is most certainly a disincentive to create music. Sure, you can tell the record companies to go screw themselves, and publish your work to a worldwide audience, but what good is if you can't make money because all the kiddies put your stuff on Napster (or Gnutella, or Freenet, etc)? Oh wow, you can play live shows. Great, you're either forever a local band, or you go on tour, and be forever exausted with the short musical career that implies.
I swear, if I gave enough damn, I'd transcribe everything Katz has ever published and put it on Napster, let's see how he likes it. Of course, no one would probably read it, and no one buys it anyways, so guess not much would change.
What we needs is something like SDMI or those ebook schemes, but really cheap and uncontrolled by the record/publishing companies. Where everyone from Eric Clapton to the average guitar geek can publish their music on the net and set the price to whatever they feel will maximize their profit (which of course be a small fraction of a penny for the average guitair geek;-).
But, like I said, that is a rather pedantic definition of type safe. I don't see what pointer arithmetic, memory management, or lack of bounds checking have to do with type checking. They might encourage logic errors, but not type errors.
Although... gcc does let me pass an array of one static length to a function that expects a different length, but that is a type error only if you consider char[3] and char[4] to be different types. I just think of them as "arrays of char", the length itself has nothing to do with the type.
And it looks like Java does not let one assign a length to an array type, that's always an attribute assigned at run-time.
That's a bizarre definition of "type safe". How do you accomplish anything at a system level without pointers, etc.? Even in Java it is necessary to downcast things. C++ is just as safe if you use dynamic_cast.
Please explain how one can do anything in a strongly typed, inheritance-based language without casts? The concept of type safety does not include the impossibly that programs may crash when one ignores or misuses those very features that guarantee type safety.
There huge profits are directly dependant on their control over popular culture. What do you think would happen to their profits if it suddenly became uncool to listen to crap like Britney Spears or Korn or most hip-hop?
In 1996 or so I read the DMCA, the entire bill, including all the riders and junk added to it. I don't remember much except that the good parts tended to be redundant, already covered by existing copyright law, and bad parts, like your anti-circumvention measures, seemed less about protecting copyright and more about increasing the power that copyright holders have over how, why, and where inviduals use or experience copyrighted works.
The "digital" and "millenium" parts of this law were simply a smokescreen to push these changes through. An author needs no new rights in the "digital age", the same rights that apply to words on paper apply to bits. Unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works was as illegal in 1990 as it is now. The unauthorized access of others' computer systems was as illegal in 1990 as it is now (which has nothing to do with copyright, your example is intentionally misleading).
Interesting, my recent posting history isn't nearly as invective as it has been in other times.
Is my post really that ignorant and unthinking, or does it simply challange you in way that is irrefutable, as it confirms your assumptions about the enemy (be it science, reductionism, Western Imperialism, white male chauvanism, etc.) while it presents that point of view with same type of unshakable emotional argument that is the hallmark of the rabid environmentalist?
Troll, straw man, or agent provocateur, qu'est-ce que la différence? Perhaps I act out of love, holding the slashdot readership in such high regard that I would sacrifice all my time for the slim chance that it would encourage someone to examine his or her own prejudices, and thus leave this forum a better person.
The reason that we have the potential to do so much damage to our environment is not that we are (individually or collectively) more powerful than the planet -- we've got nothing on the motion of geologic plates -- but we operate on a different timescale.
Typical Green nature worship. "You think you're so smart, but you're not more powerful than Mother Nature!" Tectonic plates my butt, thanks to that timescale you speak of, we'll be able to slag entire planets in a hundred years or so. We'll have Mother Nature where she belongs: under our thumbs to do our bidding.
Do we really want a world where those with money are smarter, faster, stronger, and healthier than those without?
Nah, don't worry about. Genes will will be warez of the future. For every Ken and Barbie produced by the gene labs, there will be thousands of illegal clones born from their shed skin cells.
In fact, I'm betting clones and the "genegineered" will be legally madated to be sterile, under pretext of protecting the gene pool from contamination, but really because the gene companies and their customers won't like their value decreased by the cheap illegal knock-offs breeding.
Ah, but there has been a SF story based on this concept! I don't remember who wrote it, but the basic plot was there was guy who bought the spent fuel tanks of shuttle lauches (the big red things), and used them construct a space habitat. People scoffed at the idea initially, but eventually it became economically viable, and corporate/government interests wanted it for their own. The habitat was a closed system and was mostly self-sufficient, but needed propellant to keep the orbit stable. That was the angle that the bad guys used to coerce the owner of the habitat into selling, but in a moment of serindipity (due to an accident I think) the protagonist realized that if he applied or drew a current from the superstructure he could change orbit using the earth's magnetic field. Ah, yes, the title was "Dynamo", no wait, "Tank Farm Dynamo", and it was written by David Brin. (Thanks Internet Speculative Fiction Database!)
Boohoo. No one is putting a gun to their head and making them to sell movies. If they don't like the rules, they can pack up and go home. Don't cry when we exercise rights that predate the film industry.
You do realize, of course, that all these same arguments apply to our other favorite whipping boy, the government. This applies to individual parts of the government as well, such as he FBI and NSA. Most of them are just normal people who think they're doing the right thing and protecting their fellow citizens.
Does that mean I trust, or that others should trust, these organization? Hell no! You'd be a fool to look at their track record and still trust them. No matter how noble the intentions of the individual members, the organization culture, and the agenda of its leaders, has always and will always seek to maximize its power to the deteriment of your freedom. I think Venor Vinge describes their attitude best: "Aw, come on, just an inch. We won't fuck you!"
Why do I bring this up? Well, Microsoft has a proven track record of being a bunch of fucking bullying and deceitful pricks. Astro-turf, the Halloween memo, what they did to DR-DOS, Cytrix Winframe, Stack Electronics, etc..
It's the same as the FBI. Just because most Microsoft employees are nice people doensn't make the organization as whole something trustworthy. Remember, the employees don't set the agenda, Bill and his lackeys (like Ballmer) do. Microsoft isn't a democracy; it's power is not derived from the bottom up. It is derived from Bill's fanaticism and the greed of it's shareholders.
Oh, and Mr. Limo, if you think big media is diverse enough that the agenda of its owners won't affect its content, read up a little on Rupert Murdoch and the various newspaper cartels that buy up independant newspapers and impose their editorial agenda on them.
if you want good anime, just watch Gundam, Urusei Yatsura, or that wonderful show, Sailor Moon
Wow, you dis Reboot as a bad cartoon, but then praise a franchaise which has beaten the Giant Humaniod Robots Fighting cliche into the ground. And don't even get me started on Sailor Moon, the show whose only reason for popularity among adults is that it caters to pedophiles with a schoolgirl fetish.
You don't understand what privacy is. It is not hiding any and all information about yourself. Privacy is control over personal information. It means *I* get to choose who knows what about me.
Are you advocating European-style privacy laws? Please clarify what exactly is "personal information", and where this choice is made.
For example, are you suggesting that one should not be required to disclose my income when applying for a lease or loan, such as for an apartment or mortgage? Many people consider that personal information. What about medical histories and health insurance? There is no choice in the matter when an entire industry follows the same conventions.
What should determine your "right" to privacy, the respective industries, or government regulation?
Bah, it's obviously a fantasy because Arny's decompression, and the subsequent pressurization of Mars, is so damn fake. He'd be dead after that long in a vacuum, and it would take days for the atmospheric pressure to equalize.
This might be because of a bug in IIS 4.0. You can't set a cookie and send a Location: header at the same time, because the web server will eat the Set-Cookie.
I called Micro~1 about this one, and the bastards tried to charge me for their workaround, which was to rename all the CGIs to have nph- in front of them (which stands for no-parsed-header). They knew about the bug beforehand, yet did not publish anything about it until the day after I called! I suspect they let bugs reports sit until someone calls their support line, just so they can make money off them. Now that's innovation!
You're a dumbass. If someone is leaving early, then they should be payed accordingly. It's really the fault of your employer, or idiots like you who want to shovel the same responsibilities on people who take less hours. What's the matter, does soccer mom humble your skills?
Half the women at my company are mothers, and most all of the mothers have ~30 hour weeks. Documentation, QA, and one programer. And all of them are superb at what they do and all of them put in the hours they're supposed to.
And what is this shit about quitting after having a baby? If they want to quit, that's their perogative. At least you have several months to find a replacement. When people quit for higher paying jobs, do you whine about that too?
You sound like some bitter prick whose never gotten laid, full of spite for anyone with a wife and a family.
That reminds me, I've got some anecdotes for this thread. While I was in college I had a female friend who worked in the computer labs (as did I). People would question the help she gave, when they would never question mine, though she was almost as knowledgable. Once, even, another user assistent mocked her when she asked to use the UA machine. His exact words were "why, need to email your boy-friend?" with emphasis on the last word, like he some hick saying "a-rab or eye-talian".
I also TA-ed the introductory programming class one quarter, which was taught by a female instructor. Some students would question her teaching ability, while others had no problem, even praised her. The first group was exclusivly male, and arrogant. One student would even refer to her as "that bitch", as if she were to blame for his difficulty, or as if it would encourage some sort of male solidarity. What a dumbass.
And guess what, the two most competent students in my section were female, though neither were CS. They had the aptitute; I can't help but wonder if cultural stereotyping had anything to do with their choice of major.
I suspect that a great many of the dissenters on this thread and the previous article are threatened by skilled women. It is convienent that there has been a history of whiny feminists with ulterior motives, it makes it all to easy to discount the claims of anyone professing the existence of a gender bias.
But guess what? Math is hard, guys don't like girls who are brainy, and computers are for nerds. At least, that's what popular culture says, and most impressionable young girls eat it up. I witnessed the change in my own little sister. She went from "computers are fun" to "computers are for nerds" back to "computers are fun" when the Internet became cool. She's not stupid, she's just trying to fit in. I did the same when I was her age, quitting the gifted program and listening to music I didn't like. God, I even faked interest in sports for a while.
But computers are stereotypical guy thing, so I fit right in, and gained lots of friend with similar interests. That's a lot harder for girls, who have more pressure to conform, more requirements for conformity, and all the historical baggage that says they need to be good little passive airheads, or they'll, like, never get a good prom date, and end up spinsters fer sure!
And if they have the bazookas to scorn popular culture, they've still got to put up with pathetic fuckwads, who, instead of welcoming them, mock them for their supposed lack of skills and interest in a "guy's" domain.
So, to the poster of the parent message, you are part of the problem. Until you grow up and get some freakin' self esteem, I hope you never get laid.
Well, I believe the origin of this "unplug yourself and experience the real world, dumbass" genre of romantic sciffy stared with The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. It certainly seems to predict a great deal of the capabilities of the modern Internet.
A fantasy with hostile AIs does not equal a luddite rant. It wasn't even dependance on computers that was the danger, it was the dependance on the farcaster network invented and controlled by the AIs.
If any prophetic message is to be gleaned from those novels I'd say it is something like Don't trust a technology you do not understand.
Magic implies a violation of natural laws (hence the word "supernatural"), so I'd say it is much more akin to religion. The Clarke quote means that sufficiently advanced technology will appear to violate natural laws to those whose understanding of nature is less than that of those who invented the technology.
Besides, who says technology can't be a metaphor for God?
Slashdot Mirror
What's wrong with learning from a computer game? Sure, it's a grossly simplified model, but do you think they just pulled that stuff out of their butts?
Have you actually read much history? Or, more specifically, have you read much on how history is shaped by technology?
History repeats itself because human nature doesn't change all that much. We're basically the same now is when we were tens of thousands of years ago.
What does change is technology. Sure, culture evolves, but how much of that evolution would occur without the technological changes that help it occur? Would popular culture exist without a telecommunications infrastructure? Would suburbia exist without automobiles? Would slavery have ended without the industrial revolution? Would organized religion, democracy, or science, exist without writing? Would we have ever formed cities and nations without agriculture? Get the point?
Most technological advancement, at least up until the formalization of the scientific method, has come from common people, thinking, "there's got to be a better way", whether that person be a blacksmith trying to build a better tool, or a farmer trying to lessen his workload or grow better crops, or a merchant trying to figure out cheaper ways to get goods to market, and so on.
You're probably thinking of how science became a trendy hobby for the wealthy during the Age of Reason. That's when you start see people like Newton, Galileo, etc.
Well, like all monopolies, the music cartel is itself a limiter of opportunities. I don't see how much more moral business is when it uses its political power to stifle and kill upstarts (in a generic sense, refering to the insider deals and mutual back-scratching that goes on in business), or the way it buys off the government in order legistate their power (Sonny Bonehead copyright extension, much of DMCA, tariffs on recording media, etc).
Nobody can argue that the sharing of music online necessarily deprives the music industry (or artists) of any incentive to create music.
;-).
That is bullshit. Regardless of how evil the big record companies are, the ability to copy music online is most certainly a disincentive to create music. Sure, you can tell the record companies to go screw themselves, and publish your work to a worldwide audience, but what good is if you can't make money because all the kiddies put your stuff on Napster (or Gnutella, or Freenet, etc)? Oh wow, you can play live shows. Great, you're either forever a local band, or you go on tour, and be forever exausted with the short musical career that implies.
I swear, if I gave enough damn, I'd transcribe everything Katz has ever published and put it on Napster, let's see how he likes it. Of course, no one would probably read it, and no one buys it anyways, so guess not much would change.
What we needs is something like SDMI or those ebook schemes, but really cheap and uncontrolled by the record/publishing companies. Where everyone from Eric Clapton to the average guitar geek can publish their music on the net and set the price to whatever they feel will maximize their profit (which of course be a small fraction of a penny for the average guitair geek
Heheh, at first I thought he was talking to me.
But, like I said, that is a rather pedantic definition of type safe. I don't see what pointer arithmetic, memory management, or lack of bounds checking have to do with type checking. They might encourage logic errors, but not type errors.
Although... gcc does let me pass an array of one static length to a function that expects a different length, but that is a type error only if you consider char[3] and char[4] to be different types. I just think of them as "arrays of char", the length itself has nothing to do with the type.
And it looks like Java does not let one assign a length to an array type, that's always an attribute assigned at run-time.
That's a bizarre definition of "type safe". How do you accomplish anything at a system level without pointers, etc.? Even in Java it is necessary to downcast things. C++ is just as safe if you use dynamic_cast.
Please explain how one can do anything in a strongly typed, inheritance-based language without casts? The concept of type safety does not include the impossibly that programs may crash when one ignores or misuses those very features that guarantee type safety.
There huge profits are directly dependant on their control over popular culture. What do you think would happen to their profits if it suddenly became uncool to listen to crap like Britney Spears or Korn or most hip-hop?
In 1996 or so I read the DMCA, the entire bill, including all the riders and junk added to it. I don't remember much except that the good parts tended to be redundant, already covered by existing copyright law, and bad parts, like your anti-circumvention measures, seemed less about protecting copyright and more about increasing the power that copyright holders have over how, why, and where inviduals use or experience copyrighted works.
The "digital" and "millenium" parts of this law were simply a smokescreen to push these changes through. An author needs no new rights in the "digital age", the same rights that apply to words on paper apply to bits. Unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works was as illegal in 1990 as it is now. The unauthorized access of others' computer systems was as illegal in 1990 as it is now (which has nothing to do with copyright, your example is intentionally misleading).
I wonder, are you plant by the RIAA?
Interesting, my recent posting history isn't nearly as invective as it has been in other times.
Is my post really that ignorant and unthinking, or does it simply challange you in way that is irrefutable, as it confirms your assumptions about the enemy (be it science, reductionism, Western Imperialism, white male chauvanism, etc.) while it presents that point of view with same type of unshakable emotional argument that is the hallmark of the rabid environmentalist?
Troll, straw man, or agent provocateur, qu'est-ce que la différence? Perhaps I act out of love, holding the slashdot readership in such high regard that I would sacrifice all my time for the slim chance that it would encourage someone to examine his or her own prejudices, and thus leave this forum a better person.
The reason that we have the potential to do so much damage to our environment is not that we are (individually or collectively) more powerful than the planet -- we've got nothing on the motion of geologic plates -- but we operate on a different timescale.
Typical Green nature worship. "You think you're so smart, but you're not more powerful than Mother Nature!" Tectonic plates my butt, thanks to that timescale you speak of, we'll be able to slag entire planets in a hundred years or so. We'll have Mother Nature where she belongs: under our thumbs to do our bidding.
Do we really want a world where those with money are smarter, faster, stronger, and healthier than those without?
Nah, don't worry about. Genes will will be warez of the future. For every Ken and Barbie produced by the gene labs, there will be thousands of illegal clones born from their shed skin cells.
In fact, I'm betting clones and the "genegineered" will be legally madated to be sterile, under pretext of protecting the gene pool from contamination, but really because the gene companies and their customers won't like their value decreased by the cheap illegal knock-offs breeding.
Ah, but there has been a SF story based on this concept! I don't remember who wrote it, but the basic plot was there was guy who bought the spent fuel tanks of shuttle lauches (the big red things), and used them construct a space habitat. People scoffed at the idea initially, but eventually it became economically viable, and corporate/government interests wanted it for their own. The habitat was a closed system and was mostly self-sufficient, but needed propellant to keep the orbit stable. That was the angle that the bad guys used to coerce the owner of the habitat into selling, but in a moment of serindipity (due to an accident I think) the protagonist realized that if he applied or drew a current from the superstructure he could change orbit using the earth's magnetic field. Ah, yes, the title was "Dynamo", no wait, "Tank Farm Dynamo", and it was written by David Brin. (Thanks Internet Speculative Fiction Database!)
Boohoo. No one is putting a gun to their head and making them to sell movies. If they don't like the rules, they can pack up and go home. Don't cry when we exercise rights that predate the film industry.
You do realize, of course, that all these same arguments apply to our other favorite whipping boy, the government. This applies to individual parts of the government as well, such as he FBI and NSA. Most of them are just normal people who think they're doing the right thing and protecting their fellow citizens.
Does that mean I trust, or that others should trust, these organization? Hell no! You'd be a fool to look at their track record and still trust them. No matter how noble the intentions of the individual members, the organization culture, and the agenda of its leaders, has always and will always seek to maximize its power to the deteriment of your freedom. I think Venor Vinge describes their attitude best: "Aw, come on, just an inch. We won't fuck you!"
Why do I bring this up? Well, Microsoft has a proven track record of being a bunch of fucking bullying and deceitful pricks. Astro-turf, the Halloween memo, what they did to DR-DOS, Cytrix Winframe, Stack Electronics, etc..
It's the same as the FBI. Just because most Microsoft employees are nice people doensn't make the organization as whole something trustworthy. Remember, the employees don't set the agenda, Bill and his lackeys (like Ballmer) do. Microsoft isn't a democracy; it's power is not derived from the bottom up. It is derived from Bill's fanaticism and the greed of it's shareholders.
Oh, and Mr. Limo, if you think big media is diverse enough that the agenda of its owners won't affect its content, read up a little on Rupert Murdoch and the various newspaper cartels that buy up independant newspapers and impose their editorial agenda on them.
if you want good anime, just watch Gundam, Urusei Yatsura, or that wonderful show, Sailor Moon
Wow, you dis Reboot as a bad cartoon, but then praise a franchaise which has beaten the Giant Humaniod Robots Fighting cliche into the ground. And don't even get me started on Sailor Moon, the show whose only reason for popularity among adults is that it caters to pedophiles with a schoolgirl fetish.
You don't understand what privacy is. It is not hiding any and all information about yourself. Privacy is control over personal information. It means *I* get to choose who knows what about me.
Are you advocating European-style privacy laws?
Please clarify what exactly is "personal information", and where this choice is made.
For example, are you suggesting that one should not be required to disclose my income when applying for a lease or loan, such as for an apartment or mortgage? Many people consider that personal information. What about medical histories and health insurance? There is no choice in the matter when an entire industry follows the same conventions.
What should determine your "right" to privacy, the respective industries, or government regulation?
create interactive, useful web sites.
Given the track record of those web developers who parrot the word "interactive", I'd say this statement is an oxymoron.
Good reviews of free software encourage people to write more? It's a conspiracy for sure!
Bah, it's obviously a fantasy because Arny's decompression, and the subsequent pressurization of Mars, is so damn fake. He'd be dead after that long in a vacuum, and it would take days for the atmospheric pressure to equalize.
This might be because of a bug in IIS 4.0. You can't set a cookie and send a Location: header at the same time, because the web server will eat the Set-Cookie.
I called Micro~1 about this one, and the bastards tried to charge me for their workaround, which was to rename all the CGIs to have nph- in front of them (which stands for no-parsed-header). They knew about the bug beforehand, yet did not publish anything about it until the day after I called! I suspect they let bugs reports sit until someone calls their support line, just so they can make money off them. Now that's innovation!
You're a dumbass. If someone is leaving early, then they should be payed accordingly. It's really the fault of your employer, or idiots like you who want to shovel the same responsibilities on people who take less hours. What's the matter, does soccer mom humble your skills?
Half the women at my company are mothers, and most all of the mothers have ~30 hour weeks. Documentation, QA, and one programer. And all of them are superb at what they do and all of them put in the hours they're supposed to.
And what is this shit about quitting after having a baby? If they want to quit, that's their perogative. At least you have several months to find a replacement. When people quit for higher paying jobs, do you whine about that too?
You sound like some bitter prick whose never gotten laid, full of spite for anyone with a wife and a family.
That reminds me, I've got some anecdotes for this thread. While I was in college I had a female friend who worked in the computer labs (as did I). People would question the help she gave, when they would never question mine, though she was almost as knowledgable. Once, even, another user assistent mocked her when she asked to use the UA machine. His exact words were "why, need to email your boy-friend?" with emphasis on the last word, like he some hick saying "a-rab or eye-talian".
I also TA-ed the introductory programming class one quarter, which was taught by a female instructor. Some students would question her teaching ability, while others had no problem, even praised her. The first group was exclusivly male, and arrogant. One student would even refer to her as "that bitch", as if she were to blame for his difficulty, or as if it would encourage some sort of male solidarity. What a dumbass.
And guess what, the two most competent students in my section were female, though neither were CS. They had the aptitute; I can't help but wonder if cultural stereotyping had anything to do with their choice of major.
I suspect that a great many of the dissenters on this thread and the previous article are threatened by skilled women. It is convienent that there has been a history of whiny feminists with ulterior motives, it makes it all to easy to discount the claims of anyone professing the existence of a gender bias.
But guess what? Math is hard, guys don't like girls who are brainy, and computers are for nerds. At least, that's what popular culture says, and most impressionable young girls eat it up. I witnessed the change in my own little sister. She went from "computers are fun" to "computers are for nerds" back to "computers are fun" when the Internet became cool. She's not stupid, she's just trying to fit in. I did the same when I was her age, quitting the gifted program and listening to music I didn't like. God, I even faked interest in sports for a while.
But computers are stereotypical guy thing, so I fit right in, and gained lots of friend with similar interests. That's a lot harder for girls, who have more pressure to conform, more requirements for conformity, and all the historical baggage that says they need to be good little passive airheads, or they'll, like, never get a good prom date, and end up spinsters fer sure!
And if they have the bazookas to scorn popular culture, they've still got to put up with pathetic fuckwads, who, instead of welcoming them, mock them for their supposed lack of skills and interest in a "guy's" domain.
So, to the poster of the parent message, you are part of the problem. Until you grow up and get some freakin' self esteem, I hope you never get laid.
Cool, so it's like IIS, but without the bugs.
Well, I believe the origin of this "unplug yourself and experience the real world, dumbass" genre of romantic sciffy stared with The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. It certainly seems to predict a great deal of the capabilities of the modern Internet.
A fantasy with hostile AIs does not equal a luddite rant. It wasn't even dependance on computers that was the danger, it was the dependance on the farcaster network invented and controlled by the AIs.
If any prophetic message is to be gleaned from those novels I'd say it is something like Don't trust a technology you do not understand.
Magic implies a violation of natural laws (hence the word "supernatural"), so I'd say it is much more akin to religion. The Clarke quote means that sufficiently advanced technology will appear to violate natural laws to those whose understanding of nature is less than that of those who invented the technology.
Besides, who says technology can't be a metaphor for God?