Technology is part of culture, too. And I believe Obama is probably the best candidate from the perspective of overcoming a lot of the old blue-state/red-state cliches and antagonisms. It may sound hackneyed to say this, but I actually did feel stirrings of patriotic (in the sense of commitment to a community, not in terms of jingoism, nationalism, or "national branding") feeling after his South Carolina speech. So much of the divisive rhetoric we see in forums are really perpetuations of crude stereotypes and tired arguments which rely on them.
If there is anything Obama connotes to me, above and beyond his policy positions (which I am generally OK with - though I'm also OK with a lot of HRC's positions, but can't stand her) its the return of a culture of listening, of not seeing conservatives or liberals as "the enemy", but as fellow citizens. It's an idealistic position, but maybe I'm a little tired of cynicism. "Cynicism is the only form in which base souls can approach honesty." - F. Nietzsche.
Gay male couples in a committed relationship might want children of their own, that resemble each of them. Just like heterosexual couples use surrogate mothers if the female in the couple can't bring a child to term, a gay couple might want to do the same thing.
Or did you miss the bit in the article about "making eggs from male bone marrow?"
I ran Linux for several years, as well as OS/2 for a couple. Both minoritarian OSs, both with active enthusiast bases.
The tendency for its partisans to distort the truth regarding the flaws of Windows systems has made me gun-shy of any OS that has these kinds of advocates. The article itself, and its easy debunking, are case-in-point. Running Windows games in either Linux or OS/2 (back in the day) was a fraught, troubled exercise. I wasted a great deal of time trying to get things to run, while reading fantastic stories like the original article about the disastrous experience of running games (or other applications) in Windows.
It isn't that I'd expect Linux or another OS to run Windows games well or even at all. Rather, it is the claims that are made that deeply erode the credibility of an advocacy base that are a problem. When I started to run Windows and found myself less, rather than more frustrated, for desktop and entertainment applications, that credibility vanished.
Nowadays, I have a Windows-based gaming system and use a MacBook for my work. If I were in the appropriate field of work, there are applications for which I would definitely use Linux (running large-scale simulations, infrastructure, hosting large amounts of data, web-based services etc.) But I know see the hobbyist community (not the open-source community, who I consider latter-day heroes, but the "DIY"/PC-as-plaything group) as unreliable, unsophisticated and unbalanced. The author of the original article sets off all those alarms for me.
Automatically? There will almost certainly be some hoops to jump through at best. Yes, if you have an advanced degree and/or much-needed skills, it is easier than for those without them. But even then, it is far from automatic.
It's much easier to leave a religion than to leave a nation. (Not that they keep you from leaving, though your ties to friends and family might, but that it's not like you can automatically find another place to go.)
.... and we don't consider musical notation art, nor do we consider brush-stroking art. We consider them the mechanical elements in the production of art.
See, I think the appreciation of any art requires some ability to comprehend cultural codes. Some of those codes are very, very widespread, some are more limited. I like contemporary art music (e.g., totalism) - it sounds like noise to a lot of people, so the audience is limited to people with some background in contemporary music. The audience for a French novel is limited to people who can read French; the audience for programming art is people who can understand code. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a limited audience.
So, I agree with the "can be shared with others" element of your definition there... it just doesn't have to be "any and all others." Which is why I think the demoscene work isn't programming art: the source code isn't expected to be for anyone else, but the output is.
There is a difference between skill and art, a big one. Like I said elsewhere, this is a case of skillful, even virtuoso programming being used to create software art.
If they publish the code and show us that, then that becomes programming art. But although the constraints were programmatic, the demo is evaluated and appreciated based on its output. I actually think in the above case that you suggested that the source code itself was art, as the idea of the work was directly contained in it.
Don't misunderstand. I really do believe that "programming as art" is possible and in fact exists, as well as "programming as expression" My observation is that, since we don't look at the source code when we see a demoscene demo, but do see the output, and because we evaluate it based on its output rather than on the elegance of its source code, that this doesn't qualify as "programming as art." There is in this case a certain amount programming craft being employed to make software art, but that's somewhat different.
I don't think it is "programming as art" as much as it is "making art through programming", because the art-object - the thing that we are looking at and appreciating - is the execution of the program, not the source-code itself. We can be impressed at the skill and ingenuity of writing the program within the space confines that each demo category produces, just like we can be impressed at the self-imposed restrictions of Dogme 95 film-makers. Those restrictions are orthogonal to the effectiveness of the demo itself, though.
The programming is the how of the art work. But just like we can think of painting as art without thinking of "brushstrokes as art", we can think of software as art without calling it programming "as" art. I do think it is possible for source-code itself to be a work of aesthetic appreciation (granted, with a somewhat limited audience, but then all audiences are limited) but that's not what this is.
The thing needs to not look like a regular flashlight. If it does look like a regular flashlight, I will drop everything I am doing now to become a torts lawyer, because the money will just make itself.
It's nothing to do with being "smart" or "stupid." If you go to a restaurant, use the restroom, and they just happen to keep a few piranha in an aquarium that just happens to look like a toilet bowl, I think you'd probably not say, "oh, foolish me, for sitting on this thing that looks exactly like a toilet bowl.
That was the best analogy I've come up with today.
I'm an atheist who generally leaves religious beliefs alone, for a wide range of reasons (including the fact the most of us hold our beliefs for pre-rational reasons, and that most of us have contradictory beliefs, and that religious and spiritual beliefs are usually about emotional needs, etc.) And most people I know with my background (to not put too fine a point on it, intellectuals with a wide-ranging liberal education) share my attitude.
Who I have seen become rabidly anti-religious are people from very religious areas who are still in the process of rebelling against it, for whom religion is a surrogate for a conflict with their families or hometowns or such. I know rabidly anti-religious people from Florida, Texas, and West Virginia, but none that I can think of from New York City, San Francisco, or Boston (except for those that didn't make it to college - usually of very blue-collar backgrounds.)
A lack of education may explain an individual's poor performance in a society, but I think you may find that it doesn't explain a society's systemic failures very well. And it can be counter-productive. Our value system often tells us that education is the measure of all value and the basis of all success, but it isn't really true.
Peru's Sendero Luminoso, a guerrilla movement which triggered a protracted and bloody civil war, was the product of an educational project. During the 50's and into the 70's, it was believed that education was the key to moving Peru to development. A lot of universities were created, and a lot of people who couldn't afford them were given the opportunity to go. However, when they graduated, they found themselves without opportunities: they were in the same society and economy as before.
Infrastructure, capital, and institutions are what enable people to "fish." If you "teach a man to fish" but he has no way of getting a fishing rod, the local streams and ponds are polluted, the fish are almost all dead, and its hundreds of miles away from the local fisheries, what you've done is wasted his time. Education needs to be structured to enable the individual to take a role in society that is at least feasible for that person to achieve, a role that is supported by local institutions.
When I got older, I actually realized how smart most people are about at least a few things. If you're still holding onto your blanket contempt for others, I don't think you've gotten a lot out of your years.
I can't believe that this hasn't been pasted in yet: (from "Bart the Mother")
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend. Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards? Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse? Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas! Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
I actually know a lot about art. I've taught art history courses. And these are actually both insightful and funny: they really do illuminate aspects of the works they play off of. Some of the humor relies on know about both the art-historical and geek references, though.
Art, literature and philosophy are also better oriented toward asking "why" (as in "to what end" or "for what purpose") in a way that the natural sciences are not.
You know what really annoys me about that stereotype? The lengths that geeks will go to disprove it, dragging along their often-bored-and-disinterested girlfriends and wives along to events as if to prove "See? I'm getting laid!" It's ridiculous, and my beautiful wife who is here with me now agrees.
Memetics (which, IMO, is a crude application of evolutionary psychology to the realm of culture, but I'll play along) explains why different beliefs from your own may actually work in your own interests. Beliefs aren't atomic and isolated, but work within the contexts of other systems of practice and environment, and just like a certain amount of homosexuality in a population may actually benefit everyone in that population, a certain amount of belief in God, in teleology, etc. may also benefit the population at large.
Besides, even if you did some complete identification with your own beliefs such that you considered their prosperity the same as your own, a meta-meme about memes that didn't frame holders of other memes as "enemies" (particularly absent the ability or intention to remove them from the gene and meme pool) would probably be more adaptive. The irony is, you and I hold similar memes about God and religion, but different meta-memes. (Going further along this line will push us to the breaking point of the meme-idea, because thought is a process and a behavior, not a property or unit.)
There's a difference between simple passive belief and actively working to bring about a state of affairs, capisci? And between them, there's a sub-category of "should" beliefs, as well. But, you're being intentionally dense here.
The set of people advocating nuclear civil war is a very small sub-set of the people who have religious beliefs. It isn't their beliefs that make them enemies: it is their advocacy of nuclear civil war (assuming they were in any situation to do anything about it.) And one could advocate nuclear civil war for beliefs that you shared, such as a general misanthropic attitude. There are lots of people who share my beliefs, but who advocate or pursue things that put them at odds with me.
I don't like it when people are too cavalier about quitting and getting a new job without recognizing how difficult that might be, but if your motivation for staying in your job is the stability it provides, an unstable, unreasonable and unpredictable management culture suggests that you may never be very secure there, anyway. Even from the perspective of paying off the house and feeding the kid, you may be well-served by moving on.
Are the Inquisition and the Crusades happening now? The "glass house" to which you refer has been dust for centuries, while the stone is soaring to something that is still very much in effect.
Slashdot Mirror
Technology is part of culture, too. And I believe Obama is probably the best candidate from the perspective of overcoming a lot of the old blue-state/red-state cliches and antagonisms. It may sound hackneyed to say this, but I actually did feel stirrings of patriotic (in the sense of commitment to a community, not in terms of jingoism, nationalism, or "national branding") feeling after his South Carolina speech. So much of the divisive rhetoric we see in forums are really perpetuations of crude stereotypes and tired arguments which rely on them.
If there is anything Obama connotes to me, above and beyond his policy positions (which I am generally OK with - though I'm also OK with a lot of HRC's positions, but can't stand her) its the return of a culture of listening, of not seeing conservatives or liberals as "the enemy", but as fellow citizens. It's an idealistic position, but maybe I'm a little tired of cynicism. "Cynicism is the only form in which base souls can approach honesty." - F. Nietzsche.
Thank you. A phrase like this (and the reading of homophobia it accompanies) vindicates the hours I've spent reading Slashdot.
Gay male couples in a committed relationship might want children of their own, that resemble each of them. Just like heterosexual couples use surrogate mothers if the female in the couple can't bring a child to term, a gay couple might want to do the same thing.
Or did you miss the bit in the article about "making eggs from male bone marrow?"
I ran Linux for several years, as well as OS/2 for a couple. Both minoritarian OSs, both with active enthusiast bases.
The tendency for its partisans to distort the truth regarding the flaws of Windows systems has made me gun-shy of any OS that has these kinds of advocates. The article itself, and its easy debunking, are case-in-point. Running Windows games in either Linux or OS/2 (back in the day) was a fraught, troubled exercise. I wasted a great deal of time trying to get things to run, while reading fantastic stories like the original article about the disastrous experience of running games (or other applications) in Windows.
It isn't that I'd expect Linux or another OS to run Windows games well or even at all. Rather, it is the claims that are made that deeply erode the credibility of an advocacy base that are a problem. When I started to run Windows and found myself less, rather than more frustrated, for desktop and entertainment applications, that credibility vanished.
Nowadays, I have a Windows-based gaming system and use a MacBook for my work. If I were in the appropriate field of work, there are applications for which I would definitely use Linux (running large-scale simulations, infrastructure, hosting large amounts of data, web-based services etc.) But I know see the hobbyist community (not the open-source community, who I consider latter-day heroes, but the "DIY"/PC-as-plaything group) as unreliable, unsophisticated and unbalanced. The author of the original article sets off all those alarms for me.
Automatically? There will almost certainly be some hoops to jump through at best. Yes, if you have an advanced degree and/or much-needed skills, it is easier than for those without them. But even then, it is far from automatic.
It's much easier to leave a religion than to leave a nation. (Not that they keep you from leaving, though your ties to friends and family might, but that it's not like you can automatically find another place to go.)
.... and we don't consider musical notation art, nor do we consider brush-stroking art. We consider them the mechanical elements in the production of art.
See, I think the appreciation of any art requires some ability to comprehend cultural codes. Some of those codes are very, very widespread, some are more limited. I like contemporary art music (e.g., totalism) - it sounds like noise to a lot of people, so the audience is limited to people with some background in contemporary music. The audience for a French novel is limited to people who can read French; the audience for programming art is people who can understand code. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a limited audience.
So, I agree with the "can be shared with others" element of your definition there... it just doesn't have to be "any and all others." Which is why I think the demoscene work isn't programming art: the source code isn't expected to be for anyone else, but the output is.
There is a difference between skill and art, a big one. Like I said elsewhere, this is a case of skillful, even virtuoso programming being used to create software art.
If they publish the code and show us that, then that becomes programming art. But although the constraints were programmatic, the demo is evaluated and appreciated based on its output. I actually think in the above case that you suggested that the source code itself was art, as the idea of the work was directly contained in it.
Don't misunderstand. I really do believe that "programming as art" is possible and in fact exists, as well as "programming as expression" My observation is that, since we don't look at the source code when we see a demoscene demo, but do see the output, and because we evaluate it based on its output rather than on the elegance of its source code, that this doesn't qualify as "programming as art." There is in this case a certain amount programming craft being employed to make software art, but that's somewhat different.
I don't think it is "programming as art" as much as it is "making art through programming", because the art-object - the thing that we are looking at and appreciating - is the execution of the program, not the source-code itself. We can be impressed at the skill and ingenuity of writing the program within the space confines that each demo category produces, just like we can be impressed at the self-imposed restrictions of Dogme 95 film-makers. Those restrictions are orthogonal to the effectiveness of the demo itself, though.
The programming is the how of the art work. But just like we can think of painting as art without thinking of "brushstrokes as art", we can think of software as art without calling it programming "as" art. I do think it is possible for source-code itself to be a work of aesthetic appreciation (granted, with a somewhat limited audience, but then all audiences are limited) but that's not what this is.
The thing needs to not look like a regular flashlight. If it does look like a regular flashlight, I will drop everything I am doing now to become a torts lawyer, because the money will just make itself.
It's nothing to do with being "smart" or "stupid." If you go to a restaurant, use the restroom, and they just happen to keep a few piranha in an aquarium that just happens to look like a toilet bowl, I think you'd probably not say, "oh, foolish me, for sitting on this thing that looks exactly like a toilet bowl.
That was the best analogy I've come up with today.
I'm an atheist who generally leaves religious beliefs alone, for a wide range of reasons (including the fact the most of us hold our beliefs for pre-rational reasons, and that most of us have contradictory beliefs, and that religious and spiritual beliefs are usually about emotional needs, etc.) And most people I know with my background (to not put too fine a point on it, intellectuals with a wide-ranging liberal education) share my attitude.
Who I have seen become rabidly anti-religious are people from very religious areas who are still in the process of rebelling against it, for whom religion is a surrogate for a conflict with their families or hometowns or such. I know rabidly anti-religious people from Florida, Texas, and West Virginia, but none that I can think of from New York City, San Francisco, or Boston (except for those that didn't make it to college - usually of very blue-collar backgrounds.)
A lack of education may explain an individual's poor performance in a society, but I think you may find that it doesn't explain a society's systemic failures very well. And it can be counter-productive. Our value system often tells us that education is the measure of all value and the basis of all success, but it isn't really true.
Peru's Sendero Luminoso, a guerrilla movement which triggered a protracted and bloody civil war, was the product of an educational project. During the 50's and into the 70's, it was believed that education was the key to moving Peru to development. A lot of universities were created, and a lot of people who couldn't afford them were given the opportunity to go. However, when they graduated, they found themselves without opportunities: they were in the same society and economy as before.
Infrastructure, capital, and institutions are what enable people to "fish." If you "teach a man to fish" but he has no way of getting a fishing rod, the local streams and ponds are polluted, the fish are almost all dead, and its hundreds of miles away from the local fisheries, what you've done is wasted his time. Education needs to be structured to enable the individual to take a role in society that is at least feasible for that person to achieve, a role that is supported by local institutions.
When I got older, I actually realized how smart most people are about at least a few things. If you're still holding onto your blanket contempt for others, I don't think you've gotten a lot out of your years.
I can't believe that this hasn't been pasted in yet: (from "Bart the Mother")
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
I actually know a lot about art. I've taught art history courses. And these are actually both insightful and funny: they really do illuminate aspects of the works they play off of. Some of the humor relies on know about both the art-historical and geek references, though.
Art, literature and philosophy are also better oriented toward asking "why" (as in "to what end" or "for what purpose") in a way that the natural sciences are not.
You know what really annoys me about that stereotype? The lengths that geeks will go to disprove it, dragging along their often-bored-and-disinterested girlfriends and wives along to events as if to prove "See? I'm getting laid!" It's ridiculous, and my beautiful wife who is here with me now agrees.
I think the real flaw for both of them were profound emotional problems, not a lack of business acumen.
Memetics (which, IMO, is a crude application of evolutionary psychology to the realm of culture, but I'll play along) explains why different beliefs from your own may actually work in your own interests. Beliefs aren't atomic and isolated, but work within the contexts of other systems of practice and environment, and just like a certain amount of homosexuality in a population may actually benefit everyone in that population, a certain amount of belief in God, in teleology, etc. may also benefit the population at large.
Besides, even if you did some complete identification with your own beliefs such that you considered their prosperity the same as your own, a meta-meme about memes that didn't frame holders of other memes as "enemies" (particularly absent the ability or intention to remove them from the gene and meme pool) would probably be more adaptive. The irony is, you and I hold similar memes about God and religion, but different meta-memes. (Going further along this line will push us to the breaking point of the meme-idea, because thought is a process and a behavior, not a property or unit.)
There's a difference between simple passive belief and actively working to bring about a state of affairs, capisci? And between them, there's a sub-category of "should" beliefs, as well. But, you're being intentionally dense here.
The set of people advocating nuclear civil war is a very small sub-set of the people who have religious beliefs. It isn't their beliefs that make them enemies: it is their advocacy of nuclear civil war (assuming they were in any situation to do anything about it.) And one could advocate nuclear civil war for beliefs that you shared, such as a general misanthropic attitude. There are lots of people who share my beliefs, but who advocate or pursue things that put them at odds with me.
I don't like it when people are too cavalier about quitting and getting a new job without recognizing how difficult that might be, but if your motivation for staying in your job is the stability it provides, an unstable, unreasonable and unpredictable management culture suggests that you may never be very secure there, anyway. Even from the perspective of paying off the house and feeding the kid, you may be well-served by moving on.
Are the Inquisition and the Crusades happening now? The "glass house" to which you refer has been dust for centuries, while the stone is soaring to something that is still very much in effect.