Back in 1982. I got into computers because of it -- it was the first magazine which protrayed computers as more than faceless high-tech nightmares. It focused on the k00l stuph you could do with your cutting-edge Apple IIe and Atari 800 systems, and included lots of great software to type in. Yeah, that's right, you little punks:TYPE IN. In BASIC. No disks, no CD-ROMs. You wanted software in those days, you copied it, line by line, from a magazine. (Don't even think about OCR. Or scanners. Or, for that matter, modems.) It died with the age of 8-bit computing, killed by the likes of PC Magazine, as computers moved out of the den and into the office. Now, the trend continues. Ah well. Twenty years from now, someone will be writing moving memoirs of the old Slashdot days...
It collapsed under the weight of its own pretensions. The pack leader, Andrew Shapiro, wrote a book in which he basically argued 'freedom is bad because people might make choices I disagree with' and managed to demonstrate a stunning lack of comprehension about what the Internet is. (One example he used was of an online store practicing racial discrimination. Uhm...Andrew...on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.) He also advocates *mandating* RSACI-type filters in Explorer/Netscape/et al, and even advocates shipping only 'kid friendly' browsers until an 'adult' browser can be activated via some sort of key. This surprised me;I always assumed liberals were anti-ratings, at least. (Page 173-174, if you want to check it out.)
Let's see, how did that whole mess go? Easy-to-use ripcord left me a tube of congealed orange goop which needed to be dug out with a spoon (which bent). Dumped in Bowl A. Bowl A turned out to be too small, transfer to Bowl B. Add water. Stir. Stir. Stir. Attempt to speed process by mushing orange goop up with wooden spoon. Finally produce adequate juice-like substance. Confront problem II:How to put it into abandoned milk jug. Solve problem II by scooping out juice with measuring cup. Slow, annoying, process which resulted in a lot of spilled juice, which attracted curious cats, who then got sticky fur. Stupid cats.
Actually, there's a valuable lesson to be gleaned from this:Use the right tools. If I had a basic 1-gallon pitcher, the entire process would have been grossly simplified. I wonder who many of the 'problems' with technology are due to people using screwdrivers as hammers, metaphorically speaking?
By the way, when I am in the mood to cook, I make a pretty good General Tso's Chicken. Nyeah. But the point is, I don't have to. Technology gives us choices...cook a meal, nuke a meal, order a pizza. If some people can't handle those choices...nuts to them.
In terms of having an essay on the subject posted almost a year ahead of him. Check out Simplify this!, in which I point out that the 'simple' life is, in reality, a lot more complex and time-consuming than the 'complex' life, as well as being MORE, not less, dependant on random factors. A life in which you spend two hours cooking dinner instead of mastering the complexities of the microwave is not a life where you have more freedom. Period.
Luddites are, basically, parasites, and ought to be denied such things as vaccinations, glasses, sterile medical instruments, and other'complex' things. (Sale, quoted in Katz' article, whines about computers and loves his old manual tyepwriter. Apparently he believes a machine with thousands of precision-engineered moving parts grew on the typewriter tree. Let's see him write his rants with a quill pen.)
Look, people. McCain is a book-burning fascist pig of the first order. He is behind the TV ratings scam, and is the sponsor of several bills mandating censorware on all government-funded terminals...laws which will likely expand to cover all terminals, as laws tend to do. I am the uber-capitalist to end all uber-capitalists, but even *I* am not going to sell my liberty to save on taxes. If you back McCain, you back censorship. Period.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in 1982. I got into computers because of it -- it was the first magazine which protrayed computers as more than faceless high-tech nightmares. It focused on the k00l stuph you could do with your cutting-edge Apple IIe and Atari 800 systems, and included lots of great software to type in. Yeah, that's right, you little punks:TYPE IN. In BASIC. No disks, no CD-ROMs. You wanted software in those days, you copied it, line by line, from a magazine. (Don't even think about OCR. Or scanners. Or, for that matter, modems.) It died with the age of 8-bit computing, killed by the likes of PC Magazine, as computers moved out of the den and into the office. Now, the trend continues. Ah well. Twenty years from now, someone will be writing moving memoirs of the old Slashdot days...
It collapsed under the weight of its own pretensions. The pack leader, Andrew Shapiro, wrote a book in which he basically argued 'freedom is bad because people might make choices I disagree with' and managed to demonstrate a stunning lack of comprehension about what the Internet is. (One example he used was of an online store practicing racial discrimination. Uhm...Andrew...on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.) He also advocates *mandating* RSACI-type filters in Explorer/Netscape/et al, and even advocates shipping only 'kid friendly' browsers until an 'adult' browser can be activated via some sort of key. This surprised me;I always assumed liberals were anti-ratings, at least. (Page 173-174, if you want to check it out.)
Actually, there's a valuable lesson to be gleaned from this:Use the right tools. If I had a basic 1-gallon pitcher, the entire process would have been grossly simplified. I wonder who many of the 'problems' with technology are due to people using screwdrivers as hammers, metaphorically speaking?
By the way, when I am in the mood to cook, I make a pretty good General Tso's Chicken. Nyeah. But the point is, I don't have to. Technology gives us choices...cook a meal, nuke a meal, order a pizza. If some people can't handle those choices...nuts to them.
Luddites are, basically, parasites, and ought to be denied such things as vaccinations, glasses, sterile medical instruments, and other'complex' things. (Sale, quoted in Katz' article, whines about computers and loves his old manual tyepwriter. Apparently he believes a machine with thousands of precision-engineered moving parts grew on the typewriter tree. Let's see him write his rants with a quill pen.)
Look, people. McCain is a book-burning fascist pig of the first order. He is behind the TV ratings scam, and is the sponsor of several bills mandating censorware on all government-funded terminals...laws which will likely expand to cover all terminals, as laws tend to do. I am the uber-capitalist to end all uber-capitalists, but even *I* am not going to sell my liberty to save on taxes. If you back McCain, you back censorship. Period.