funny observations, and usually true, but in this case I believe you're going to discover (come 2003/04) you were dead wrong in betting against the films when both completely blow your mind right out of your head.
the W brothers envisioned a triology from the get-go. and they consider the first film in the trilogy the weak-but-necessary preamble to establish the very complex structural narrative which will be leveraged by the second two films.
if they consider "The Matrix" to be the weakest link in their series (one of the greatest sci-fi films EVER), i'm inclined to trust that they'll deliver the goods. if it takes an extra year, it isn't because they're sitting around trying to figure out a plot. It is because they know they only have one chance to do this correctly, that their cinematic legacy is at stake. Films that are perfect, uncompromised artistic realizations of a unique vision are rare enough. Rarer still are those that can be commercially successful.
Give them the benefit of the doubt. If you want to preemptively gloat about an inevitable cinematic disappointment that lacks in plot and worthiness, I'd recommend you consider the upcoming sure-to-be-a-groaner, "Attack of the Clones". Don't bet against Lucas when it comes to disappointing fans and bungling a legacy- or you WILL be disappointed. He's done it before- TWICE (Jedi & Menace) and he'll do it again. Sure as eggs is eggs.
Thanks -Ryan, Salamander and szomb for the kind comments. I believe that the subject deserves considerably more attention than the occasional threads on Slashdot- which tend to focus on symptoms of this problem rather than the problem itself. The sad consequence of treating symptoms, in medicine as in addressing societal maladies, is that the sickness remains.
The ironic difficulty here is that many partipants in the Slashdot community are themselves unknowingly victims of the sickness of an inability to contextualize information and/or an ignorance about the indispensability of values in the life of an individual and a society. Hence, the tendency of threads about the symptoms (school shootings, etc.) to deteriorate quickly into futile but sometimes compelling arguments about first-amendment-versus-second-amendment freedoms, etc.
I hope a lot of you will give Postman's work a read. He is a brilliant, lucid social theorist- and he touches on many profound subjects in his works. It is, in my opinion, his most intriguing work.
If you find the premise of childhood's eradication to be engaging, do also help yourself to his other works.
"Technopoly" discusses the eradication of culture by technology itself. It was written in a pre-Internet age (by this I mean before the Internet had reached outside of the academic/institutional/research worlds and into all of our daily lives). Postman had no foreknowledge of the Internet's upcoming capacity to accelerate the trends he describes, so the work is feeling less like prophecy and more like history every day.
Also consider "Amusing Ourselves to Death", which discusses the corrosive effects of our modern media structure on everything from attention span, to literacy, to capacity to reason, and so forth.
All of his books will leave you with new lenses by which to view some of the more vexing of what are (currently) American societal ills. (If "Technopoly" is currect, we are currently exporting the problem to other highly developed nations and we can expect to see them experience similar societal problems within a generation or two...) You may find (as I did) that you do not agree with particular theories or concusions, but that you agree with and are edified by the broader observations and disturbed by the potential longterm societal consequences of the trends in media, education, and culture. They are ultimately, and I don't use the term loosely, "apocalyptic" in nature (in a secular sense of the word).
If you have a religious worldview (as I do), you may also find these trends to be apocalyptic in the religious sense, as well. I know I may be checking my intellectual credentials at the door with many of you by stating I am a Christian- and so be it. I say this because my own religious worldview, a filter which lenses "meaning", "purpose", "morality", "judgment", etc., is one of the means by which I contextualize the information we're discussing. And it suggests (to me) that the outcome is pre-determined and the course of mankind unchangeable- even as it is our duty (as Christians) to call others to awareness of the outcome (as well as the purpose of man, the holiness of God, the nature of sin, etc.). When you read the works of Postman in the context of the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel (Old Testament) and Revelation (New Testament), the overlap is perfectly congruous- which is simultaneously terrifying and comforting. (I know I just lost the majority of you on this point, but what can I say? These are my beliefs.)
I know I could be 100% incorrect in my interpretation of these separate information sources (secular social theory and biblical prophecy). Nevertheless, I am grateful to have had a real childhood, to have learned how to reason, to believe in God and Christ, and to have a brain that can process information and contextualize it well enough to have confidence in my beliefs, and a hope that life may have meaning, despite the pain we experience and the senseless acts of evil we witness. And I hope for everyone who reads it, the same peace-of-mind and sense of purpose in your own lives.
"does childhood end when computers come into their lives, as Jonathan Lebed's father laments in "Next"? I suspect there's some truth to the idea that things can get lost and values skewed when any single value system or interest -- computing, sports, music -- overwhelms a person's days and nights and crowds out everything else?"(etc...)
Your question radically hypersimplifies the problem, Jon, as well as the human race (which admittedly sometimes deserves to be hypersimplified).
If you, ANY of you, are interested in the subject, you owe it to yourselves to read Neil Postman's very thoughtful analysis of the sad subject, "The Disappearance of Childhood".
Postman posits that the phase of human development we commonly refer to as "childhood" is a social construct, one that came about primarily as a result of the public educational system created in America only a couple hundred years ago.
Childhood was a period in which the institutions of society (from schools, to government, to families, to churches) actually "protected" children from information. (I can hear you squints groaning already, but please, let me finish). This was easily managed because there was a rather universal morality that the various institutions that made up our society subscribed to- and- terror-of-terrors, it was pretty much the Judeo-Christian one that most of the founding fathers (Deists, Puritans, Christians, Agnostics all) believed in. Children, brought into the public education system, were not only taught math, science, etc.- they were taught the ten commandments, the pledge of allegiance, etc. (They were taught patriotism and morality- by the schools! ARGH!!!)
Childhood, then, was a period in which children were taught a standard of right-and-wrong, and were also kept innocent from much of the harsh realities that their minds were deemed not yet ready to contextualize.
Information was tightly controlled and regulated. There was no ratings-driven-and-and-advertising-subsidized-mass -media reaching into every household through television sets. There was, if you will, a universal operating system for the nation itself, and to the individual mind, as well.
I know, it seems terrifying. There are a million bad things to say about such a society, and I've no doubt that hundreds of you will re-appropriate all the bile and vitriol you've stored for diatribes about the evil menace that is Microsoft in eviscerating the evil menace that was "America" until recently. We know too well that such a system is capable of legislated racism and sexism (truly and inarguably terrible legacies of America 1.0). We know it is capable of gross violations of civil liberties, with impunity (government-sponsored biological experiments on its own citizenry, wiretapping, etc...).
But there are benefits and advantages to having universal standards in a societal system- and I don't just mean for those institutions determining the standards. I'm talking about the people. One of the greatest benefits of such a societal system was a public education system that was, in its time, unparalleled in the entire world for providing a quality of education to any willing citizen. Another benefit was that shame was a powerful psychological force for discouraging behavior that was not in the society's best interests. Seem puritanical? It was! But many of today's societal ills- especially those that affect children- were all but unimaginable then. Teenage pregnancy? School shootings? Drug-addiction in teenagers? They weren't a problem. Why? Because it was "WRONG" to have sex before marriage, "thou shall not kill", and "what are drugs", respectively?
The human mind is, in a very real sense, akin to the computer it ultimately conceived of in its image. The best and most productive minds are like the best and most productive computing systems- the have a tested, feature-rich operating system controlling the activities and information storage/retrieval of information itself. When humans don't get taught a worldview (a comprehensive perspective on right, wrong, truth, value, etc.), they are less effective when it comes to contextualizing information. You can have the biggest hard-drive in the world, and if you're running DOS 1.0 on an IBM-PC, you're pretty much going to be limited to a dull-ass computing life.
In answer to the original question, "does childhood end when computers come into (kids') lives?". No. Childhood ends when children are given unrestricted access to uncontextualized information. So often, when the subject of school shootings comes up on Slashdot, it descends into arguments about gun-control, videogame violence, first-amendment issues, etc. But every so often, someone nails it by saying, "Parents should teach their children right from wrong". Parents now are the sole institution with the authority to teach their children a worldview. And sadly, more and more parents are abdicating this profound responsibility by turning their kids over to be taught by television sets and now, the Internet. (Divorce happens in half of all households, showing children that even the parental institution isn't reliable or trustworthy). Childhood, as we've known it, is going to become an outdated concept. And it is more fitting to ask, "can childhood ever begin?".
I've hardly done justice to Postman's wonderful book- go and buy it now if you've any interest in a thoughtful, NON-CHRISTIAN examination of the issue of the eradication of childhood.
1) I'm not a programmer, I'm a Mac user. So admonitions to 'get over myself' are wasted, since I'm not one of you. I'm making an observation about the Infocom team, about which I'll elaborate.
2) I was referring to the creators of Infocom games, who were both programmers in the grandest sense as well as artists of serious calibre. "Interactive" fiction is made up of TWO pieces, the "interactive" part (programming) and fiction (an artform).
If you don't think that Infocom games merit consideration as art, then you're an absolute idiot and I'd be surprised if you could program your own VCR.
Today's 'graphical extensions' of Zork might be a game like "Myst", or some of the other visual adventure games with puzzles-to-solve in the process. There are some parallels even in games like "Resident Evil" and other largely linear, puzzle-based games.
But in honesty, the beauty and genius of Infocom's games won't be replicated in a graphical gaming environment. As soon as the computer screen was doing the rendering that previously was up to the NVidia card in your head, your head didn't have to trouble itself.
Infocom games demanded that players use both their imaginations (to visualize the written word) and their problem-solving skills (to solve the myriad of problems encountered in the course of gaming).
I think that, while enormous imagination goes into *creating* today's best games, I think most require a lot less imagination on the part of the player. Games are becoming more cinematic. This isn't an entirely bad thing, but it is sad that the current generation of gamers are going to miss out on the truly rewarding experience of text-based adventure gaming.
And I still remember which so vivid clarity the profound emotion that Infocom games were able to cultivate during gameplay... I remember my abject terror when being captured by Krill's minions in "Enchanter"
- madly scrambling to find a way out of the cell, only to be sacrificed on the altar by Krill himself, a glowing blade plunged into my heart. - I remember how hard I laughed when Floyd, the genius robot with the maturity of a 6-year old from "Planetfall" first starting took out a crayon and wrote his name on the elevator wall, and how I wept (WEPT you heartless cynical punkasses, copious tears!) when he sacrificed his life to help me solve the game.
Text-based systems required more of the participants, but gave back so much more to those who invested the time...Which reminds me...
When is Slashdot going to get-with-the-times, dump all this text-based news commentary crap, and GIVE US NEWS WE CAN JUST SIT BACK AND WATCH!
If only Ion Storm had released a 3d shooter called "Storming Ion Storm", in which you play an opinionated geek running around a virtual community armed with an obnoxiously deadly penchant for regurgitating old jokes about Daikatana, they might have had a grassroots hit on their hands.
Clearly, there are already legions of players here.
FWIW, I'd prefer not to play that game. It was fun two years ago maybe. And maybe it'll come back on a wave of retro-nostalgia when today's/. young bucks are having the 20 year reunion in 2018. Picture it with me, won't you?
It'll be at a 10x10 booth at PC Expo, the Linux "Woulda Coulda Shoulda" gathering. Two dozen middle-aged dorks sitting around bashing Microsoft and AOL/Time Warner (their booths occupying 95% of the entire tradefloor). Then the subject of crappy games will come up, because X-Box Ultra is the only gaming system around. Then invariably, with the sense of nostalgia for the halcyon days causing all sorts of synaptic activity, someone will say, "You know who used to really SUCK?" - "Jon Katz?" - "No, even more than Katz..." - "Who?" - "Ion Storm!"
A burst of chuckles. Then someone shouts "First Post!", causing everyone else to await his comment.
"Hah- turns out KillCreek made John Romero HER bitch!"
Laughter. One person comments, "Funny +1". Another repeats it. Another. Then someone else says, "Overrated -1". More laughter. Some high fives.
Life will go on, even for those who, while living, do not have a life.
How exactly does this translate into value for the end user of such a network of affiliated sites? I'm not trying to be contrary, I just don't think I understand what meaningful advantages are derived at the end-user perspective? Convenience of some sort?
The one area where I something like this at work in my own day-to-day, to my displeasure, is in the Amazon Tip-Jar system.
I don't like going to Andrew Sullivan's site or Modern Humorist's site and seeing, at the top of the page, "Hi there, Smirkleton (insert my real name here)". It bugs me to see my identity is immediately known to these sites by-way-of their using Amazon's TipJar system.
I understand how it benefits affiliated sites, but not how it benefits end-users. Anyone got any insights here?
I know it is theoretically the perfect power source, and that it shouldn't produce environmental problems like nuclear waste or dirty emission - but I also know as-sure-as-eggs-is-eggs that there is going to be a protest movement against it, regardless. Which leads me to my question...
Are there any fusion protest groups yet? I'm always late to join protest movements so I get crappy seating at rallies and never get to talk to the news media about my important opinions on the subject.
If you know of any, please post. If it helps, I am SINCERELY against the late 60's musical movement by the same name.
(signed, someone who genuinely wants to make a difference, as long as others are watching...)
...than using computer modeling to figure out why shower curtains suck inward, it is surely the idea of potentially hundreds of/. denizens offering their various opinions (and arguing!) about anything pertaining to this matter in this forum.
Yes, guilty as charged. I'm just saying. When you say, "News for Nerds", I certainly can't argue. But how this constitutes "Stuff that matters.", I certainly can't imagine. Nevertheless...
Ya ever feel like stuff you read in the news, about the 'dangerous potency' of certain products is actually a result of extremely calculated publicity efforts from guys who know a little bit about urban legendry and guerilla marketing?
Well you're a dumbass, then, because it happens all the time.
(holding nose while providing link to a Salon.com article about this very intentionally misunderstood beverage...)
I'll leave it to those more cynical than myself to accuse VA Linux of engineering this/. story as a roundabout way to drive sales of caffeinated
beverages.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb
Operator: We get signal
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us
Cats: You are on the way to destruction
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time
Cats: HA HA HA HA....
Captain: Take off every 'zig'
Captain: You know what you doing
Captain: Move 'zig'
Captain: For great justice
...one in which slashdot remained free, but derived shared revenue from sales of high-margin-but-useful-goods at Thinkgeek. It COULD'VE been so beautiful...
Ironically, given the way things have turned out, it seems like one of the best potential models for continuing to grow Slashdot from a revenue/profit standpoint, while NOT requiring a subscription and NOT alienating the audience would be for Slashdot and ThinkGeek to merge and exist independent of VA Linux.
Why?
Slashdot attracts a specific demographic / psychographic. The readership, scattered across the globe, skews heavily towards young male programmers, offering "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".
ThinkGeek has amassed a gigantic-and-still-growing product line that targets that population very well- and created a brand that states overtly who they are going for. ThinkGeek offers "stuff for smart masses".
I wouldn't ever pay for a subscription to Slashdot, though I'm a fan, because there really isn't much in the way of proprietary value offered here. Slashdot's 'original' content consists of useful product reviews (for things I, as a Mac user, don't need) and Jon Katz editorials about Columbine. So the primary purpose Slashdot serves for me personally (and probably for many of you folks) is to serve as a news filtering service. Given that I care more than the average CNN.com reader about technology related matters (and sometimes technology humor), I read Slashdot. It is, despite the criticisms of many old school users, still a good source for breaking news (via links to disparate sites). Occasionally, it even leads to interesting discussions (as often as it does to "All Your Base" jokes (still!) and ubernerd debates at technical levels I can't follow closely enough to care about...)
While I wouldn't pay for this service, because the value isn't tangible enough for me to want to exchange currency for it, I would DEFINITELY buy things from ThinkGeek that provided tangible value, and would be especially motivated to do so if I thought the good people at Slashdot would benefit financially from it. A lot of the stuff on ThinkGeek has to have pretty good profit margins (shirts, mugs, posters, etc...), so the opportunity to 'share the wealth' would be there. I don't know about the margins on caffeine, but I suspect they aint TOO bad (especially since ThinkGeek marks up some of their stuff over other online sources!;-p ) Since ThinkGeek is one of the most heavily circulated advertisers remaining on Slashdot, I'm led to assume that it must generate SOME business for them...
Now that the bubble has popped, we are left to see things as we should have always seen them. The redefinition of value, from a business perspective, emphasizes those old school concepts of stable revenue growth, high profit margins, low operating costs, etc... VA Linux, for a while, was a poster-child for the repudiation of these business values (hence the $350/share stock runup, despite huge losses, low margins, gigantic operating costs, etc...). I'm making assumptions here since I haven't seen ThinkGeek's financials, but it looks to me like they probably have real value as a business, because they probably keep costs low, have good margins, no need to advertise (outside of this narrow community).
So in the end, a model that probably would've really been built to scale would have been to have Slashdot serve the news needs of their community, and ThinkGeek serve their more material needs, and you'd have a classic case of one-hand-washing-the-other without all this stupid talk about creating subscription fees for Slashdot as the viable way to generate revenue.
The unfortunate reality, kids, is that in the heat of the insane mania of 1998-2000, the destinies of really valuable sites like ThinkGeek and Slashdot ended up being alloyed with the base metals of VA Linux. They (the powers that wanted a hot stock offering) threw gold and platinum in the melting pot with tin and aluminum, and created a compound that diluted the valuable to enrich the base metals. They then sold junk jewelry made of the stuff to greedy speculators who thought the alchemy actually worked. Now, the metallurgists have rendered their analysis, dispelled the myths (that VA Linux was the next Microsoft, etc...) and have told anyone who can hear, "You wasted your money. Your jewelry has traces of gold and platinum in it, but its mostly tin and aluminum. Not worth much, and sadly, a waste of some good jewelry."
And what can VA Linux say in their defense at this point? Having conjoined the destinies of two valuable sites to their own? I think the only thing that they CAN say to the opensource community that they may have alienated with these machination is:
"ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." .
(you didn't think I was going to miss my chance to put that joke to work, did you?)
Try substituting "news" for "radio". Do you understand the appeal of online news? You must, to some extent, since you're posting your musings in Slashdot, which provides 'news for nerds. stuff the matters.'
What brings you to slashdot? Maybe it is because it is a more specialized source for news than the sludge they pump out for the mass consumer at CNN. Maybe your interests are more particularly bent towards technology concerns (chip advances, IP law, LINUX news, etc.)
As you have more specialized tastes than mainstream news media may be able to satisfy, allow that many have more specialized musical interests than top-40 radio can effectively cater to.
My dad would find the news stories noteworthy to slashdot to be "superfluous", as well the music being pumped 24/7 on specialized radio networks like the "Progressive Rock Channel". Consequently he's missing out on a lot of breaking news in the tech space, and a lot of extended, self-indulgent instrumental noodling by pretentious drug-using art-students... (lucky him, actually!)
Fans of progressive art rock aren't likely to live in a city with a large enough population to have a progressive rock radio station. It is because 'the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few' in the marketplace. Yet, they don't obviate the needs of the few. So if an alternative channel exists to satisfy the needs of the few, why be surprised if people want to use it, even if it is currently subpar.
...if he was killed, scientists might be forced to re-engineer him in a laboratory using his genetic material, filling in missing gene sequences with that of a nearby relative (perhaps H.R. Puf-N-Stuf?).
In short, there's a palpable risk that he could could be re-engineered into a species infinitely more corny and terrifying than we could possibly imagine.
(p.s. - if any of you Internet comedians steal my idea about making a Jurassic Park parody with scientists building a theme park populated with genetically-engineeried enhancements of Barney, H.R. Puf-N-Stuf, the Banana Splits, or whatever... I'll sue for infringement.... In the spirit of this news thread...)
(well, maybe not. but could you at least throw CATS into the mix somehow?)
... I'm glad to see the Cube bite it . It is capitalism's way of rolling up a newspaper and smacking Steve Jobs on his sometimes artistically elitist ass.
I love what Apple is capable of achieving in form, but it remains one of their most obnoxious tendencies to assume that form is a means unto itself. When function goes out the door - which it did in the case of the gorgeous but functionally impractical Cube - it is all but impossible to generate meaningful demand. A small population of design purists will buy anything Apple releases. They should have known better and released a more expensive Cube produced in smaller quantities (like the 20th Anniversary Mac from a while back).
This same elitist streak in Apple led to the 'innovation' of their sleek, gorgeous one-button mouse. I, along with the majority of other Apple Power Users, threw the dang thing away and plugged in (the horror) a 3 button Microsoft Mouse instead. I like the look of the Apple mouse better, but since I actually need to USE the thing, and since my usage entails more than simply surfing the Internet and single-clicking, I'm forced by practicality to use a functionally superior product from a company that remains mostly oblivious to aesthetics and originality.
After all these years, Steve Jobs' vanity continues to lead Apple to repeat their early blunders. With absolute certainty, the one thing we can all look forward to in the future of Apple under Steve Jobs' leadership is repeatedly making the most gorgeous mistakes in the computer industry.
While the quality of the series may have begun to decline before the X-Files movie, I was at that point still engaged enough to care about the characters, interested enough to want to see how the whole Cancerman/Consortium/Mytharc would resolve itself, and dedicated enough to come to the series defense on the occasion I found it being derided by purists for a decline in quality.
I am no longer thusly inclined. My trust in Chris Carter's instincts was misplaced.
Nowadays, if there is to be dissing of the series, I'll join the chorus and ask for a refrain if it ends too quickly.
I find I'm amazed at and depressed by the actions of Chris Carter. He was once a vocal defendant of preserving the dignity of the series. He spoke lucidly about needing to make decisions that were in the best interest of the characters, and one would assume, the legacy of the show. He stated repeatedly on the record there would be no romance between Scully & Mulder, such as in this interview from 1999:
"I've resisted any temptation (of romance) because I don't think it's right for the characters," says Carter. "For me, the passion and the protectiveness of one towards the other is something that we all admire and envy because that kind of trust and caring happens so infrequently in life. When it does, it is transcendent."
I'm amazed at what Chris Carter has done with the trust of viewers...
1) Scully / Mulder kiss (and probably boinked 9 months prior) as the cliffhanger for last season, with Mulder not to return to the series.
2) The Consortium alien invasion / mytharc ends (primarily) with all the main baddies getting torched in a hanger. Effectively, the threat of a "V"-like global alien invasion, which was introduced as a potential threat in the 4th season and created a palpable urgency for a few seasons following, was neutralized simply by killing off two dozen old white men that drank brandy with Cancerman.
3) The search by Mulder for his sister, which formed the true heart of the series and propulsion for his career and search for "truth" ended a couple of seasons ago with Mulder romping around with her ghost in a forest!. Turns out she died at the age of 13 or so. (insert comic 'boing!' sound effect here).
4) (insert countless examples of depressing recent plot-points, complaints about new agents, spin-off series, lack-of-focus, lack-of-care, comments about THE MONEY being more important than THE ART at this point, digs at Duchovny for forcing the relocation to California, digs at Fox for milking a cow to death, then milking a dead-cow, and a joke about "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" here).
The show has become an insufferable self-parody, and Chris Carter will have only himself to blame when it comes time to reflect on the legacy of the series. I suspect he will, for the rest of his life (particularly AFTER the series dies presumably a couple of seasons from now) hear fans and critics alike tell him that he blew it. The X-files was, in its day, both a cultural phenomenon and a show of the highest calibre. But it has become now a depressing, hollow shell of its former self. It has no heart, no soul and no mind, and it asks the same of its viewers.
"I'll be here all week folks! Thank you, you're a beautiful audience... Well, as 20-something antisocial male geek-a-zoid crowds go anyway! Ba-DUM-dump!"
Slashdot Mirror
funny observations, and usually true, but in this case I believe you're going to discover (come 2003/04) you were dead wrong in betting against the films when both completely blow your mind right out of your head.
the W brothers envisioned a triology from the get-go. and they consider the first film in the trilogy the weak-but-necessary preamble to establish the very complex structural narrative which will be leveraged by the second two films.
if they consider "The Matrix" to be the weakest link in their series (one of the greatest sci-fi films EVER), i'm inclined to trust that they'll deliver the goods. if it takes an extra year, it isn't because they're sitting around trying to figure out a plot. It is because they know they only have one chance to do this correctly, that their cinematic legacy is at stake. Films that are perfect, uncompromised artistic realizations of a unique vision are rare enough. Rarer still are those that can be commercially successful.
Give them the benefit of the doubt. If you want to preemptively gloat about an inevitable cinematic disappointment that lacks in plot and worthiness, I'd recommend you consider the upcoming sure-to-be-a-groaner, "Attack of the Clones". Don't bet against Lucas when it comes to disappointing fans and bungling a legacy- or you WILL be disappointed. He's done it before- TWICE (Jedi & Menace) and he'll do it again. Sure as eggs is eggs.
Thanks -Ryan, Salamander and szomb for the kind comments. I believe that the subject deserves considerably more attention than the occasional threads on Slashdot- which tend to focus on symptoms of this problem rather than the problem itself. The sad consequence of treating symptoms, in medicine as in addressing societal maladies, is that the sickness remains.
The ironic difficulty here is that many partipants in the Slashdot community are themselves unknowingly victims of the sickness of an inability to contextualize information and/or an ignorance about the indispensability of values in the life of an individual and a society. Hence, the tendency of threads about the symptoms (school shootings, etc.) to deteriorate quickly into futile but sometimes compelling arguments about first-amendment-versus-second-amendment freedoms, etc.
I hope a lot of you will give Postman's work a read. He is a brilliant, lucid social theorist- and he touches on many profound subjects in his works. It is, in my opinion, his most intriguing work.
If you find the premise of childhood's eradication to be engaging, do also help yourself to his other works.
"Technopoly" discusses the eradication of culture by technology itself. It was written in a pre-Internet age (by this I mean before the Internet had reached outside of the academic/institutional/research worlds and into all of our daily lives). Postman had no foreknowledge of the Internet's upcoming capacity to accelerate the trends he describes, so the work is feeling less like prophecy and more like history every day.
Also consider "Amusing Ourselves to Death", which discusses the corrosive effects of our modern media structure on everything from attention span, to literacy, to capacity to reason, and so forth.
All of his books will leave you with new lenses by which to view some of the more vexing of what are (currently) American societal ills. (If "Technopoly" is currect, we are currently exporting the problem to other highly developed nations and we can expect to see them experience similar societal problems within a generation or two...) You may find (as I did) that you do not agree with particular theories or concusions, but that you agree with and are edified by the broader observations and disturbed by the potential longterm societal consequences of the trends in media, education, and culture. They are ultimately, and I don't use the term loosely, "apocalyptic" in nature (in a secular sense of the word).
If you have a religious worldview (as I do), you may also find these trends to be apocalyptic in the religious sense, as well. I know I may be checking my intellectual credentials at the door with many of you by stating I am a Christian- and so be it. I say this because my own religious worldview, a filter which lenses "meaning", "purpose", "morality", "judgment", etc., is one of the means by which I contextualize the information we're discussing. And it suggests (to me) that the outcome is pre-determined and the course of mankind unchangeable- even as it is our duty (as Christians) to call others to awareness of the outcome (as well as the purpose of man, the holiness of God, the nature of sin, etc.). When you read the works of Postman in the context of the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel (Old Testament) and Revelation (New Testament), the overlap is perfectly congruous- which is simultaneously terrifying and comforting. (I know I just lost the majority of you on this point, but what can I say? These are my beliefs.)
I know I could be 100% incorrect in my interpretation of these separate information sources (secular social theory and biblical prophecy). Nevertheless, I am grateful to have had a real childhood, to have learned how to reason, to believe in God and Christ, and to have a brain that can process information and contextualize it well enough to have confidence in my beliefs, and a hope that life may have meaning, despite the pain we experience and the senseless acts of evil we witness. And I hope for everyone who reads it, the same peace-of-mind and sense of purpose in your own lives.
If you, ANY of you, are interested in the subject, you owe it to yourselves to read Neil Postman's very thoughtful analysis of the sad subject, "The Disappearance of Childhood".
Postman posits that the phase of human development we commonly refer to as "childhood" is a social construct, one that came about primarily as a result of the public educational system created in America only a couple hundred years ago.
Childhood was a period in which the institutions of society (from schools, to government, to families, to churches) actually "protected" children from information. (I can hear you squints groaning already, but please, let me finish). This was easily managed because there was a rather universal morality that the various institutions that made up our society subscribed to- and- terror-of-terrors, it was pretty much the Judeo-Christian one that most of the founding fathers (Deists, Puritans, Christians, Agnostics all) believed in. Children, brought into the public education system, were not only taught math, science, etc.- they were taught the ten commandments, the pledge of allegiance, etc. (They were taught patriotism and morality- by the schools! ARGH!!!)
Childhood, then, was a period in which children were taught a standard of right-and-wrong, and were also kept innocent from much of the harsh realities that their minds were deemed not yet ready to contextualize.
Information was tightly controlled and regulated. There was no ratings-driven-and-and-advertising-subsidized-mas
I know, it seems terrifying. There are a million bad things to say about such a society, and I've no doubt that hundreds of you will re-appropriate all the bile and vitriol you've stored for diatribes about the evil menace that is Microsoft in eviscerating the evil menace that was "America" until recently. We know too well that such a system is capable of legislated racism and sexism (truly and inarguably terrible legacies of America 1.0). We know it is capable of gross violations of civil liberties, with impunity (government-sponsored biological experiments on its own citizenry, wiretapping, etc...).
But there are benefits and advantages to having universal standards in a societal system- and I don't just mean for those institutions determining the standards. I'm talking about the people. One of the greatest benefits of such a societal system was a public education system that was, in its time, unparalleled in the entire world for providing a quality of education to any willing citizen. Another benefit was that shame was a powerful psychological force for discouraging behavior that was not in the society's best interests. Seem puritanical? It was! But many of today's societal ills- especially those that affect children- were all but unimaginable then. Teenage pregnancy? School shootings? Drug-addiction in teenagers? They weren't a problem. Why? Because it was "WRONG" to have sex before marriage, "thou shall not kill", and "what are drugs", respectively?
The human mind is, in a very real sense, akin to the computer it ultimately conceived of in its image. The best and most productive minds are like the best and most productive computing systems- the have a tested, feature-rich operating system controlling the activities and information storage/retrieval of information itself. When humans don't get taught a worldview (a comprehensive perspective on right, wrong, truth, value, etc.), they are less effective when it comes to contextualizing information. You can have the biggest hard-drive in the world, and if you're running DOS 1.0 on an IBM-PC, you're pretty much going to be limited to a dull-ass computing life.
In answer to the original question, "does childhood end when computers come into (kids') lives?". No. Childhood ends when children are given unrestricted access to uncontextualized information. So often, when the subject of school shootings comes up on Slashdot, it descends into arguments about gun-control, videogame violence, first-amendment issues, etc. But every so often, someone nails it by saying, "Parents should teach their children right from wrong". Parents now are the sole institution with the authority to teach their children a worldview. And sadly, more and more parents are abdicating this profound responsibility by turning their kids over to be taught by television sets and now, the Internet. (Divorce happens in half of all households, showing children that even the parental institution isn't reliable or trustworthy). Childhood, as we've known it, is going to become an outdated concept. And it is more fitting to ask, "can childhood ever begin?".
I've hardly done justice to Postman's wonderful book- go and buy it now if you've any interest in a thoughtful, NON-CHRISTIAN examination of the issue of the eradication of childhood.
...which reminds me. You guys need to replace the Bill Gates borg pic with a Steve Case one.
1) I'm not a programmer, I'm a Mac user. So admonitions to 'get over myself' are wasted, since I'm not one of you. I'm making an observation about the Infocom team, about which I'll elaborate.
2) I was referring to the creators of Infocom games, who were both programmers in the grandest sense as well as artists of serious calibre. "Interactive" fiction is made up of TWO pieces, the "interactive" part (programming) and fiction (an artform).
If you don't think that Infocom games merit consideration as art, then you're an absolute idiot and I'd be surprised if you could program your own VCR.
First I disagree with an earlier comment.
Today's 'graphical extensions' of Zork might be a game like "Myst", or some of the other visual adventure games with puzzles-to-solve in the process. There are some parallels even in games like "Resident Evil" and other largely linear, puzzle-based games.
But in honesty, the beauty and genius of Infocom's games won't be replicated in a graphical gaming environment. As soon as the computer screen was doing the rendering that previously was up to the NVidia card in your head, your head didn't have to trouble itself.
Infocom games demanded that players use both their imaginations (to visualize the written word) and their problem-solving skills (to solve the myriad of problems encountered in the course of gaming).
I think that, while enormous imagination goes into *creating* today's best games, I think most require a lot less imagination on the part of the player. Games are becoming more cinematic. This isn't an entirely bad thing, but it is sad that the current generation of gamers are going to miss out on the truly rewarding experience of text-based adventure gaming.
And I still remember which so vivid clarity the profound emotion that Infocom games were able to cultivate during gameplay... I remember my abject terror when being captured by Krill's minions in "Enchanter" - madly scrambling to find a way out of the cell, only to be sacrificed on the altar by Krill himself, a glowing blade plunged into my heart. - I remember how hard I laughed when Floyd, the genius robot with the maturity of a 6-year old from "Planetfall" first starting took out a crayon and wrote his name on the elevator wall, and how I wept (WEPT you heartless cynical punkasses, copious tears!) when he sacrificed his life to help me solve the game.
Text-based systems required more of the participants, but gave back so much more to those who invested the time...Which reminds me...
When is Slashdot going to get-with-the-times, dump all this text-based news commentary crap, and GIVE US NEWS WE CAN JUST SIT BACK AND WATCH!
guilty as charged. i'll be there too, making meta-commentaries and being rightfully heckled by Anonymous Cowards.
Amazing to see the continued vitriol.
/. young bucks are having the 20 year reunion in 2018. Picture it with me, won't you?
If only Ion Storm had released a 3d shooter called "Storming Ion Storm", in which you play an opinionated geek running around a virtual community armed with an obnoxiously deadly penchant for regurgitating old jokes about Daikatana, they might have had a grassroots hit on their hands.
Clearly, there are already legions of players here.
FWIW, I'd prefer not to play that game. It was fun two years ago maybe. And maybe it'll come back on a wave of retro-nostalgia when today's
It'll be at a 10x10 booth at PC Expo, the Linux "Woulda Coulda Shoulda" gathering. Two dozen middle-aged dorks sitting around bashing Microsoft and AOL/Time Warner (their booths occupying 95% of the entire tradefloor). Then the subject of crappy games will come up, because X-Box Ultra is the only gaming system around. Then invariably, with the sense of nostalgia for the halcyon days causing all sorts of synaptic activity, someone will say, "You know who used to really SUCK?" - "Jon Katz?" - "No, even more than Katz..." - "Who?" - "Ion Storm!"
A burst of chuckles. Then someone shouts "First Post!", causing everyone else to await his comment.
"Hah- turns out KillCreek made John Romero HER bitch!"
Laughter. One person comments, "Funny +1". Another repeats it. Another. Then someone else says, "Overrated -1". More laughter. Some high fives.
Life will go on, even for those who, while living, do not have a life.
How exactly does this translate into value for the end user of such a network of affiliated sites? I'm not trying to be contrary, I just don't think I understand what meaningful advantages are derived at the end-user perspective? Convenience of some sort?
The one area where I something like this at work in my own day-to-day, to my displeasure, is in the Amazon Tip-Jar system.
I don't like going to Andrew Sullivan's site or Modern Humorist's site and seeing, at the top of the page, "Hi there, Smirkleton (insert my real name here)". It bugs me to see my identity is immediately known to these sites by-way-of their using Amazon's TipJar system.
I understand how it benefits affiliated sites, but not how it benefits end-users. Anyone got any insights here?
I'll see you guys on CNN!
I know it is theoretically the perfect power source, and that it shouldn't produce environmental problems like nuclear waste or dirty emission - but I also know as-sure-as-eggs-is-eggs that there is going to be a protest movement against it, regardless. Which leads me to my question...
Are there any fusion protest groups yet? I'm always late to join protest movements so I get crappy seating at rallies and never get to talk to the news media about my important opinions on the subject.
If you know of any, please post. If it helps, I am SINCERELY against the late 60's musical movement by the same name.
(signed, someone who genuinely wants to make a difference, as long as others are watching...)
...than using computer modeling to figure out why shower curtains suck inward, it is surely the idea of potentially hundreds of /. denizens offering their various opinions (and arguing!) about anything pertaining to this matter in this forum.
Yes, guilty as charged. I'm just saying. When you say, "News for Nerds", I certainly can't argue. But how this constitutes "Stuff that matters.", I certainly can't imagine. Nevertheless...
"LET'S GET READY TO RUMMMMMMMMMMMMBLE!"
This was one of the most clear-eyed postings I've ever read on Slashdot (Timothy/Michael confusion notwithstanding...)
It is a pity Slashdot doesn't have annual awards for the most incisive contributions to the system, cuz legLess, you'd get my nod for this one.
Sadly, your only reward is a cap on your Karma at 50. The Man strikes again.
Ya ever feel like stuff you read in the news, about the 'dangerous potency' of certain products is actually a result of extremely calculated publicity efforts from guys who know a little bit about urban legendry and guerilla marketing?
/. story as a roundabout way to drive sales of caffeinated
beverages.
Well you're a dumbass, then, because it happens all the time.
(holding nose while providing link to a Salon.com article about this very intentionally misunderstood beverage...)
I'll leave it to those more cynical than myself to accuse VA Linux of engineering this
I thought you said "Police Misconduct is Illegal".
Whew...
I mourn for the stupidity of Ice Pirates myself. Alas, that craptacular bad comedy of misadventure is still available for rent.
I'm just saying...
...one in which slashdot remained free, but derived shared revenue from sales of high-margin-but-useful-goods at Thinkgeek. It COULD'VE been so beautiful...
;-p ) Since ThinkGeek is one of the most heavily circulated advertisers remaining on Slashdot, I'm led to assume that it must generate SOME business for them...
Ironically, given the way things have turned out, it seems like one of the best potential models for continuing to grow Slashdot from a revenue/profit standpoint, while NOT requiring a subscription and NOT alienating the audience would be for Slashdot and ThinkGeek to merge and exist independent of VA Linux.
Why?
Slashdot attracts a specific demographic / psychographic. The readership, scattered across the globe, skews heavily towards young male programmers, offering "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".
ThinkGeek has amassed a gigantic-and-still-growing product line that targets that population very well- and created a brand that states overtly who they are going for. ThinkGeek offers "stuff for smart masses".
I wouldn't ever pay for a subscription to Slashdot, though I'm a fan, because there really isn't much in the way of proprietary value offered here. Slashdot's 'original' content consists of useful product reviews (for things I, as a Mac user, don't need) and Jon Katz editorials about Columbine. So the primary purpose Slashdot serves for me personally (and probably for many of you folks) is to serve as a news filtering service. Given that I care more than the average CNN.com reader about technology related matters (and sometimes technology humor), I read Slashdot. It is, despite the criticisms of many old school users, still a good source for breaking news (via links to disparate sites). Occasionally, it even leads to interesting discussions (as often as it does to "All Your Base" jokes (still!) and ubernerd debates at technical levels I can't follow closely enough to care about...)
While I wouldn't pay for this service, because the value isn't tangible enough for me to want to exchange currency for it, I would DEFINITELY buy things from ThinkGeek that provided tangible value, and would be especially motivated to do so if I thought the good people at Slashdot would benefit financially from it. A lot of the stuff on ThinkGeek has to have pretty good profit margins (shirts, mugs, posters, etc...), so the opportunity to 'share the wealth' would be there. I don't know about the margins on caffeine, but I suspect they aint TOO bad (especially since ThinkGeek marks up some of their stuff over other online sources!
Now that the bubble has popped, we are left to see things as we should have always seen them. The redefinition of value, from a business perspective, emphasizes those old school concepts of stable revenue growth, high profit margins, low operating costs, etc... VA Linux, for a while, was a poster-child for the repudiation of these business values (hence the $350/share stock runup, despite huge losses, low margins, gigantic operating costs, etc...). I'm making assumptions here since I haven't seen ThinkGeek's financials, but it looks to me like they probably have real value as a business, because they probably keep costs low, have good margins, no need to advertise (outside of this narrow community).
So in the end, a model that probably would've really been built to scale would have been to have Slashdot serve the news needs of their community, and ThinkGeek serve their more material needs, and you'd have a classic case of one-hand-washing-the-other without all this stupid talk about creating subscription fees for Slashdot as the viable way to generate revenue.
The unfortunate reality, kids, is that in the heat of the insane mania of 1998-2000, the destinies of really valuable sites like ThinkGeek and Slashdot ended up being alloyed with the base metals of VA Linux. They (the powers that wanted a hot stock offering) threw gold and platinum in the melting pot with tin and aluminum, and created a compound that diluted the valuable to enrich the base metals. They then sold junk jewelry made of the stuff to greedy speculators who thought the alchemy actually worked. Now, the metallurgists have rendered their analysis, dispelled the myths (that VA Linux was the next Microsoft, etc...) and have told anyone who can hear, "You wasted your money. Your jewelry has traces of gold and platinum in it, but its mostly tin and aluminum. Not worth much, and sadly, a waste of some good jewelry."
And what can VA Linux say in their defense at this point? Having conjoined the destinies of two valuable sites to their own? I think the only thing that they CAN say to the opensource community that they may have alienated with these machination is:
"ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." .
(you didn't think I was going to miss my chance to put that joke to work, did you?)
Try substituting "news" for "radio". Do you understand the appeal of online news? You must, to some extent, since you're posting your musings in Slashdot, which provides 'news for nerds. stuff the matters.'
What brings you to slashdot? Maybe it is because it is a more specialized source for news than the sludge they pump out for the mass consumer at CNN. Maybe your interests are more particularly bent towards technology concerns (chip advances, IP law, LINUX news, etc.)
As you have more specialized tastes than mainstream news media may be able to satisfy, allow that many have more specialized musical interests than top-40 radio can effectively cater to.
My dad would find the news stories noteworthy to slashdot to be "superfluous", as well the music being pumped 24/7 on specialized radio networks like the "Progressive Rock Channel". Consequently he's missing out on a lot of breaking news in the tech space, and a lot of extended, self-indulgent instrumental noodling by pretentious drug-using art-students... (lucky him, actually!)
Fans of progressive art rock aren't likely to live in a city with a large enough population to have a progressive rock radio station. It is because 'the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few' in the marketplace. Yet, they don't obviate the needs of the few. So if an alternative channel exists to satisfy the needs of the few, why be surprised if people want to use it, even if it is currently subpar.
sorry, Anonymous Coward, didn't ever see that. I normally don't read webpages sponsored by the Olsen twins.
(EOM)
...if he was killed, scientists might be forced to re-engineer him in a laboratory using his genetic material, filling in missing gene sequences with that of a nearby relative (perhaps H.R. Puf-N-Stuf?).
In short, there's a palpable risk that he could could be re-engineered into a species infinitely more corny and terrifying than we could possibly imagine.
(p.s. - if any of you Internet comedians steal my idea about making a Jurassic Park parody with scientists building a theme park populated with genetically-engineeried enhancements of Barney, H.R. Puf-N-Stuf, the Banana Splits, or whatever... I'll sue for infringement.... In the spirit of this news thread...)
(well, maybe not. but could you at least throw CATS into the mix somehow?)
... I'm glad to see the Cube bite it . It is capitalism's way of rolling up a newspaper and smacking Steve Jobs on his sometimes artistically elitist ass.
I love what Apple is capable of achieving in form, but it remains one of their most obnoxious tendencies to assume that form is a means unto itself. When function goes out the door - which it did in the case of the gorgeous but functionally impractical Cube - it is all but impossible to generate meaningful demand. A small population of design purists will buy anything Apple releases. They should have known better and released a more expensive Cube produced in smaller quantities (like the 20th Anniversary Mac from a while back).
This same elitist streak in Apple led to the 'innovation' of their sleek, gorgeous one-button mouse. I, along with the majority of other Apple Power Users, threw the dang thing away and plugged in (the horror) a 3 button Microsoft Mouse instead. I like the look of the Apple mouse better, but since I actually need to USE the thing, and since my usage entails more than simply surfing the Internet and single-clicking, I'm forced by practicality to use a functionally superior product from a company that remains mostly oblivious to aesthetics and originality.
After all these years, Steve Jobs' vanity continues to lead Apple to repeat their early blunders. With absolute certainty, the one thing we can all look forward to in the future of Apple under Steve Jobs' leadership is repeatedly making the most gorgeous mistakes in the computer industry.
I am no longer thusly inclined. My trust in Chris Carter's instincts was misplaced.
Nowadays, if there is to be dissing of the series, I'll join the chorus and ask for a refrain if it ends too quickly.
I find I'm amazed at and depressed by the actions of Chris Carter. He was once a vocal defendant of preserving the dignity of the series. He spoke lucidly about needing to make decisions that were in the best interest of the characters, and one would assume, the legacy of the show. He stated repeatedly on the record there would be no romance between Scully & Mulder, such as in this interview from 1999:
I'm amazed at what Chris Carter has done with the trust of viewers...
The show has become an insufferable self-parody, and Chris Carter will have only himself to blame when it comes time to reflect on the legacy of the series. I suspect he will, for the rest of his life (particularly AFTER the series dies presumably a couple of seasons from now) hear fans and critics alike tell him that he blew it. The X-files was, in its day, both a cultural phenomenon and a show of the highest calibre. But it has become now a depressing, hollow shell of its former self. It has no heart, no soul and no mind, and it asks the same of its viewers.
(drum fill)
"I'll be here all week folks! Thank you, you're a beautiful audience... Well, as 20-something antisocial male geek-a-zoid crowds go anyway! Ba-DUM-dump!"
-Smirkleton. Karma comedian.