[HN Gopher] Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment ___________________________________________________________________ Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment Author : pabs3 Score : 123 points Date : 2023-03-04 07:59 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (viznut.fi) (TXT) w3m dump (viznut.fi) | grrdotcloud wrote: | I am not sure when it happened but I discovered that every game I | played over the last twenty years, reduced to it's bare minimum | functional components, was aligning a pointer on an X/Y axis and | pressing the correct button within a time window. | | The goal of computers, reduction or multiplication of work, is | often lost because the output does not last longer that the work | required to generate. | | Computers are tools. They are used as toys, or at best, | substitution of physical activities. Thankfully I only print | paper twice a year. Yet why at all? Clearly I'm trusted enough to | enter into a contract with companies yet can't be trusted to | complete trivial tasks like sending a package without paperwork. | | I'm curious if we reserved computers for qualified owners and | operators like firearms or vehicles. I personally would love to | operate one but without certification or training the ability to | have negative impact upon the population or needless self harm | outweighs the enjoyment of <current popular social media app> | | I started driving at ten. I was also a teen with unfiltered | internet over dial up but that isn't the same as personalized | curated streaming video aligned to my habits or an exploitative | corporate/State. | | If we can not determine when we're getting manipulated, can not | agree on what truth is nor speak against the authority without | being labeled an enemy how we can adapt as a people to the | growing power of computers in every pocket? | alar44 wrote: | [dead] | pbhjpbhj wrote: | Sports are just a series of muscle contractions with timing; | music is just different accelerations of the air; ... I think | these statements, and yours concerning video games, are overly | reductive. | thriftwy wrote: | > aligning a pointer on an X/Y axis and pressing the correct | button within a time window | | Heroes of Might and Magic III are somewhat older than 20 years | but they are super different than that. | yamazakiwi wrote: | Yeah I can think of a few games that this doesn't describe, | Disco Elysium for example as it has nothing to do with | "timing", as they have described it. | pmayrgundter wrote: | Reminds me of Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines | nayuki wrote: | > It is commonly thought to be futile to even try to make | youngsters interested in computers - they simply don't yet have | the required patience or concentration. There's no addictivity or | instant gratification, nothing flashy or punk that fascinates the | young mind. The appreciation and understanding of computers is | something that develops slowly over years, often via gateway | interests such as [...] pure mathematics. The kind of people who | want to settle in a monastery and dedicate their lives to science | or art may also develop an interest in computing. | | This part is already true about the study of theoretical computer | science today. People view algorithm design, big-O, proofs, | recursion, automata, Turing machines, etc. as a chore. | satisfice wrote: | This is a story, not a thought experiment. | | To be an experiment there must be some sort of question to | explore, after specifying some sort of condition. | | This is a set of assertions from beginning to end. | brazzy wrote: | And half the assertions are at odds with what computers _are | and can do_ rather than just our culture around them. | lambdaloop wrote: | All the comments here are so negative for such a beautiful essay! | | This paragraph at the end in particular really struck a chord | with me: | | > In the real world, people associate computers with many | different things: corporate dehumanization, overwhelming consumer | capitalism, alienation from the material world, shortened | attention spans, ridiculously short obsolescence cycles, etc. | etc. It is often difficult to tell these cultural biases apart | from the "essence" or computing, and it is even more difficult to | envision alternatives due to the lack of diversity. Thought | experiments like this may be helpful for widening the | perspective. | | Computing is a fundamental part of the world and crazy exciting | to play around with. It allows us to experience whole new | spectrums of reality! At its core, isn't this the essence of the | hacker ethos? | rektide wrote: | Strongly agree! | | This post so wonderfully blends a hypothetical with where we | really are, what computing has in fact become. Computiung is in | fact vanishing, hidden inside massive data centers (temples) & | behind firewalls. Applications offer packaged consumer | experiences, but actual computing recedes, gets further off, & | few people experience it. Real connection to computing is slow | & takes concentration & will to develop; it's not fast. | | This project to invert common conceptions actually reveals a | lot of truth. | | The final summation is great. | | > _So, what is the "essence" of computing then? I'd say | universality. The universality of computing makes it possible | to bend it to reflect and amplify just about any kind of | ideology or cultural construct._ | Gordonjcp wrote: | > It is commonly thought to be futile to even try to make | youngsters interested in computers - they simply don't yet have | the required patience or concentration. | | You say that, but I find it far easier to explain how to solve | computer problems over the phone to older people than younger | people. | didgetmaster wrote: | I would just be happy if the circuit board in my furnace would | last longer than 5 years and wouldn't cost 10x more to replace | than it probably should. | CoolGuySteve wrote: | It's a good story but it kind of ignores something fundamental. | Most early writing systems were created for accounting, like Bob | gets 5 wheat, Doug gets 5 sheep, etc. | | In a world where computers are some ancient artifact, they would | still have significant value as calculators and accounting tools. | It's likely some scribe class would emerge around using them to | manage the day-to-day of whatever social hierarchy is present. | | Visicalc will never die! | thriftwy wrote: | Make everyone a long-range telepath. | | You eliminate most of mundane uses of computers (such as | Whatsapp, buying stuff and getting news) since you can almost | immediately do this person to person. | | To use computers, you need to learn to read (most people can't), | which is esoteric by itself. Computers are used to store | knowledge too fragile to be transferred via pollination, and for | computations. Obviously, you need a lot of concentration to use a | computer in such a world, and will be considered loony. | kwhitefoot wrote: | > Computers are seldom privately owned - they are considered | essentially communal rather than personal | | This struck me as true of most people's use of computers now. | Almost everyone I know who isn't either an old fashioned | developer or a gamer uses a mobile phone or tablet merely as a | graphical terminal; the actual computer is some mysterious entity | elsewhere on the Net. | | The golden age of computing when 'everyone' had one of their own | that was useable offline is now long past. | entropicdrifter wrote: | I wouldn't say it's "long past", but rather in its last gasps | outside of niche hobbyist communities. There are plenty of | people whose primary computer use is still local, they're just | considered old-fashioned | beardog wrote: | Likewise Gen Z and Alpha are not very technical. Many teens and | 20 somethings have a hard time with seemingly basic tasks like | finding files. As a 20 something myself, my public school did | not offer any 'technical' courses beyond office programs and | keyboarding. | brokenmachine wrote: | In fairness, modern mobile devices seem to be determined to | make how the filesystem works as opaque as possible. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | Files and folders are based on a metaphor applying to | paper-based organizational systems. People used to have | typewriter printouts that they used to mark up by pen and | place into folders, then file away into filing cabinets. Is | there really a need for a filesystem other than in the | vestiges of what we consider an operating system? | moffkalast wrote: | Each generation consists of roughly 90% of people who are | completely clueless about anything computer related. Those of | us that work in the field usually can't even conceive of it | but it's true. | twelvechairs wrote: | Replace 'computers' with 'open source software' and you are | something closer to an uncomfortable truth. Open source has been | critical to the advancement of our world but people who go out of | their way to use and encourage open source past the basics (even | fdroid or Firefox not even getting to hardware and full software | stacks) are treated as oddballs even by the tech community. | forgetfreeman wrote: | Please enumerate the demonstrable advancements of society | attributable to open source software. | guhidalg wrote: | Ok so gcc and Linux don't exist in your world. | bee_rider wrote: | They are just describing how computing works in an academic | system if you've run out of HPC cluster credits and haven't | gotten a grant for a new system recently. | nh23423fefe wrote: | This kind of speculative fiction doesn't work. Usually the | template is described as: take some part of the world and tweak | it and then press play and see what the world looks like now. | | Instead this is just "invert some part of culture" which makes no | sense. Culture is the emergent externalized collective | intelligence of social creatures. You can't invent a culture | which would preserve this property without asserting a global | belief in the community isomorphic to the alteration. You haven't | altered the culture. You'd just asserted a group of unthinking | zombies. | | So when I read: | | > Imagine a world where computers are inherently old. Whatever | you do with them is automatically seen as practice of an ancient | and unchanging tradition. Even though new discoveries do happen, | they cannot dispel the aura of oldness. | | I can't conceive of such a world. Its incoherent. I also can't | imagine a world where no one likes metals for whatever reason. | You can't just assert a fact like that and press play. It's | nonsensical. | vanderZwan wrote: | You're basically missing the whole point of speculative fiction | in this style, which is "we start with imagining a world which | has these conclusions. Trying to imagine it forces us to try to | make sense of what could lead to those conclusions." | | You assert it's incoherent. That's part of the point: it's | incoherent with your current understanding of our current | world. There might be other circumstances that lead to a such | world without being incoherent. If the conclusions in a piece | of speculative fiction are appealing, it may be worth thinking | of what it takes to reach those conclusions. | | The thought exercise of trying to make it coherent is part of | the point. | ModernMech wrote: | The parent is describing an inductive approach to | worldbuilding, while you are describing a deductive approach. | Two sides of the same coin. | gweinberg wrote: | No, the point is it can't be done. It's like cleaning your | house with an 100 year old tortoise: you absolutely would do | that, if tortoises were plentiful and do a good job cleaning. | Why would anyone clean their houses themselves, when there | were all these old tortoises willing and able to do the job | for them? Now if the tortoise moves all your crap around so | you can't find it, leaves streaks on your mirrors and | windows, fire his scaly butt! | [deleted] | sleepybrett wrote: | This is not unlike the speculative future of Anathem. | tobr wrote: | Imagine a world where you can just assert any fact as the | starting point of speculative fiction. Then imagine that | someone would write a piece where computers were inherently | old. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | This breaks immersion for a lot of people, me included. It's | one of the biggest issues I have with lots of sci-fi (moreso | than most other types of speculative fiction) novels. Just | asserting a fact this fundamental and building your world | around it only works if societies, culture, technologies, and | history are build around it. Humanity's history with tools | and automation are millenia old. To alter this would require | a lot of changes. We've been automating, forgetting, copying, | and maintaining technologies for as long as our history. | | Alien technology encounter stories satisfy some of this for | me, as the injection of a foreign, advanced technology makes | sense in this framework, much like how ancient peoples would | discover technologies built by neighbors or rivals they | didn't communicate regularly with. | jhbadger wrote: | To some degree I agree with your last point. Before the | idea of aliens, writers like Plato and Thomas Moore would | posit some undiscovered island where they could imagine a | culture unlike their own existing, which like with aliens, | gave plausibility as to why that culture would have a | different history and traditions than their own. Of course | they, like many speculative writers today, were really | writing about how they wished their own society worked. | Jiro wrote: | It's like asking "would you believe in homeopathy if doctors | all told you that it was correct?" | | To which the answer is "Doctors believe things for reasons. | You can't just flip a switch and change what doctors think | without changing the entire world so that homeopathy is | actually true, and that would be such a weird world that | science in it would be unrecognizeable." | | (And since I'm not ChatGPT, I can answer your entire | question: "Such a story would have an incoherent world. I | could imagine someone writing a story that takes place in an | incoherent world, but you wouldn't be able to get useful | insights from it.") | andai wrote: | Expert prompt crafting! | code_duck wrote: | I got some pretty interesting sci-fi type results for that | in Stable Diffusion. It helped to negative-prompt titles, | text, words, etc | idiotsecant wrote: | I'm so mad you made this comment before me. | [deleted] | shagie wrote: | A sci-fi magazine has cut off submissions after a flood of | AI-generated stories - | https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot- | chatgpt... | | > The science fiction and fantasy magazine _Clarkesworld_ | has been forced to stop accepting any new submissions from | writers after it was bombarded with what it says were AI- | generated stories. | | > The magazine officially shut off submissions on February | 20 after a surge in stories that publisher and editor-in- | chief Neil Clarke says were clearly machine-written. | didericis wrote: | It's not just speculative. It's a retrospective on the early | mainframe era. | | The nitty gritty punch card programming was something | stereotypically done by middle aged/older women. Many early | computers were massive and housed in what could be considered | temples in big universities surrounded by gothic architecture. | They were expensive to replace and kept around for long periods | of time because of how difficult it was to upgrade (some large | mainframe systems still exist today for that reason). | Mechanical computers like the Babbage difference engine would | last a lifetime. The idea of an average Joe spending all day | using expensive compute time was insane. Those who focused on | them did so for academic reasons, and spent most of their time | meditating on computation, math, and the structure of language | and meaning. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Step 1: for some reason, the world stops making computers, but | keeps the ones that already exist | | Step 2: 100 years pass | | Step 3: computers are now an old (and dying) tradition, kept | going only by a small group of people who understand how to | care for the machines. | | Was that so hard? | curtisblaine wrote: | Step 1 is really hard if computers are useful (why do you | stop making something that's useful?), but step 3 is simply | not believable: a society that _has_ machines that could, at | the minimum, help solving complex calculations and | engineering problems much better than humans decides to | completely ignore them. That 's not how societies work. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Step 1 and 3 are, arguably, quite probable to happen in the | future. I don't think you're appreciating just how many | circular dependencies we have in the global supply chains. | We're one big cataclysm or global war to reverting back to | _pre-industrial times_ , and if that were to happen, we'd | likely be stuck there for quite a long time. Consider the | following observations: | | A. For obvious reasons, we continuously improve tooling and | processes. This creates circular dependencies that make our | civilization non-restartable. | | As a toy example, imagine we made tool A, which let us | create tool B, which let us, among other things, upgrade A | to A'. A' can still produce B, but can also produce | upgraded B'. B' obviously lets us make A'', but also C', | and A'' + C' let us make B''. Rinse, repeat for a hundred | years. The result is that the whole industry relies on | tools A'''''''''' and B''''''''''. The hobbyists still play | with A and B, maybe even A' and B', but there's nothing | between A' and A'''''''''' in actual use or production, nor | anyone who remembers their design, because they've all been | made obsolete long ago. If the calamity hits, and we can no | longer make new A'''''''''' and B'''''''''', we don't get | to downgrade a step or two - we go back all the way to A' | and B'. And all the other tools and technologies that also | relied on our advanced capacity - they all stop working and | go "back to beginning" in lock step. | | B. Making and operating tools involves ever increasing | energy use. | | C. We've used up all easily-available high-density energy | sources long ago. Both our renewable tech and our fossil | fuel mining and combustion processes are A''''''''''-level | tech. | | With that in mind, it's not that big of a stretch to write | a plausible backstory for a culture as described in the | article. | naravara wrote: | I can imagine it, but it would require a lot of | worldbuilding to explain. | | I reckon the primary means of computing for the lay person | becomes interacting with prompts to make the computer do | what you want, but the actual knowledge of software | engineering and computer science is gone. Even the prompts, | due to linguistic evolution, are in a language that regular | people don't understand and people's mastery of the | language is akin to moderns trying to reconstruct something | like Akkadian. We sort of know what specific words mean and | the general grammar, but we simply don't know 90% of the | vocabulary to express most ideas. Whatever the language | model was populated on training data from an archaic | language and is also full of weird idioms and phrases and | misspellings that we can't reconstruct in an organized way. | | In this context, the computers might be able to solve some | basic problems for us, but everything we do with them is | basically just received incantations from other crusty old | people. Innovations keep happening, but they're small scale | and mostly revolve around finding out new ways to tweak the | incantations to do novel things. But the most we can do is | say, like, "draw a picture" or "sort this list." | curtisblaine wrote: | Unless they have other means of solving those calculations | better than computers; in that case, call those other means | "computers" and the study of older computers "retro- | computing". | em-bee wrote: | something like the amish, relying on 100 year old | technology developed by humans instead of those | newfangled tools that aliens brought that no human can | understand. | kaoD wrote: | As I was reading the post I assumed (1) happened because | something better came and completely replaced computers: | magic, raw energy manipulation, biomachines, hextech... | something like that. | actionfromafar wrote: | 1 is easy to imagine - a large enough collapse that making | new ones is very very hard, especially compared to | scrounging and repurposing the huge amount of existing | ones. Imagine a huge population decline, and search parties | looking through the ruins for useful tech, like computers, | decades later. | | Such a society could probably make new computers, but the | cost of making new, much worse specced computers, may not | be cost effective for a long time as long as old computers | can be found and repaired. | | Edit: such a movie or novel would make for great Fallout- | ish world-building. Imagine for instance a large hotel in a | big city running the booking system on an old laptop in a | central secure location, and new 8-bit computers used as | terminals at the front desk. Public access 8-bit computer | terminals at public libraries connected to copies of | WikiPedia running on some old gaming rig and such things. | :-) | olddustytrail wrote: | No it isn't (No1 easy to imagine). Computers are only | useful because we have a stable society that we can build | on. Post apocalyptic societies have zero practical use | for computers. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Post-apocalyptic doesn't necessarily mean unstable. We | weren't post-apocalyptic back in the 1930s or 1950s, and | computing machines had plenty of uses already (and even | earlier). | DaiPlusPlus wrote: | > Post apocalyptic societies have zero practical use for | computers. | | Post global nuclear war reconstruction would really | benefit from having even a simple spreadsheet program to | aid with resource allocation, wouldn't it? | Karrot_Kream wrote: | > Whatever you do with them [computers] is automatically | seen as practice of an ancient and unchanging tradition. | | During a nuclear war reconstruction scenario, computing | wouldn't be seen as ancient or unchanging. We'd be in a | transitory period where we try and recreate computing | infrastructure with what we have and the power sources we | have access to. But we wouldn't develop an ancient | tradition or anything. | sleepybrett wrote: | 1 happens every fucking day, hell wasn't there an article | today about people who have older equipment that depend on | floppy disks and how hard it is to find reliable disks | these days? The article discussed an older embroidery | machine, the only way to supply it with patterns to | embroider was 3.5 inch floppy. His are starting to fail. | But this is also true of older samplers, drum machines, | synthesizers, etc. | | Sometimes someone manages to spin up new manufacturing of | retro components or things to replace the retro components | (there are a few pcbs running around that can replace | floppy drives that conform to certain interfaces with usb | sticks or sd cards or even a network): Vacuum tubes, parts | for vintage cars, parts for vintage watches, vinyl records, | etc. but often before that happens the entire known supply | needs to be scavenged. | | So I can imagine a world where we manage to start doing the | things we are doing with some new technology that is not | digital silicon based computers that run on electricity. | But there will be edges where the new technology is not | compatible with some system, and in that edge lives this | kind of speculation. | sleepybrett wrote: | hell the living computer museum in seattle, before it's at | least physical closure by the sister of paul allen, is/was a | bit like this. They have a bunch of vintage big iron that | they have restored to working condition and allow members of | the public to use. Some of these are still available on the | internet. | | https://www.livingcomputers.org/ | | https://www.livingcomputers.org/Computer- | Collection/Online-S... | | Hell deep in the chip shortage I talked with more than one | person that were buying up electronics at thrift shops and | ebay that they knew contained chips they could not source at | the time. | jay_kyburz wrote: | Imagine a world where everybody simply has an AI assistant in | their pocket, that simply tells them anything they might need | to know. Design programs for you. Draw you any image. Perhaps | even construct virtual worlds. We are almost there already. | | Only weird old people would bother to learn how to program dumb | desktop computers. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | There's a lot of people who feel disquieted by the pace of | software systems and aspire to do work in software that feels | similar to the more methodological, slower paced work of more | mature fields like HVAC engineering or structural | engineering. These folks find solace in this kind of | speculative fiction. | | I feel their disquiet is misplaced. Any young, fast-moving | field is going to be full of the same issues that software is | in now. You can look back at the history of mechanical | engineering during the industrial revolution to see many | similar problems we had with unsafe projects, hyped-up snake | oil, or iteration for the sake of iteration. The history of | automobiles and aviation was also marked by similar issues. | Slower paced engineering fields are more mature and have gone | through decades or centuries of iteration before coming up | with tried and true solutions. But fundamentally fiction | speaks to the soul more than it speaks to any measurable | outcome. Truly the only fix for this disquiet is to search | inside rather than look out. Fiction can be a great tool for | that. | jkingsbery wrote: | Good speculative fiction at least tries to give some reason why | something might come to be the case. This article just says | "pretend computers are old; old things are like X today; | therefore, computers are going to be just like X," while | ignoring all the things that are different. | [deleted] | atleastoptimal wrote: | Computers are, essentially, fast, iterative, extremely useful for | automated and communication tasks, and naturally attract young, | detail focused minds based on these qualities. Those essential | qualities lend themselves to computer culture. Inherent qualities | lead to cultural connotations, not the other way around. | ruined wrote: | always coming home | mikewarot wrote: | I've watched over time as the desktop stopped being the primary | computing device of choice for many people. I've grown far too | accustomed to the power and flexibility of a nice keyboard and | 32" monitor, and virtually endless storage and general purpose | compute _that I own_ to fall into that usage pattern, but I | understand the appeal. | | No Wednesday morning headaches from Microsoft, no applications | breaking with the new Python revision, etc. Just apps from the | app store that work (mostly). | | So, the Server Farms that comprise the cloud aren't ancient, but | they might as well be remote temples just like those we had in | the 1960s. | digitallyfree wrote: | * * * | aj7 wrote: | I don't think much "computing" is done, in our sense of the | word, on tablets and phones. Personally, I've found that almost | any slightly complex, has-to-be-done-once-and p-right, action | is better performed on an actual computer. And that's not even | considering writing new programs. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | This hasn't been my experience. I'm able to be surprisingly | effective on my smartphone. I've constructed trip | itineraries, balanced outing budgets, shared shopping lists, | designed room layouts, computed food and drink recipe ratios, | built DJ sets, laid out wood pieces, and read books using my | smartphone. Coding is probably the only thing that I find | unparalleled with a keyboard and a seated position than my | smartphone. I used to game more often when I was younger and | I still generally prefer to game in a seated position though | I have gamed on my smartphone before. | Syonyk wrote: | > _Solid-state computer components, on the other hand, have no | mechanical decay, so they are practically eternal._ | | I _wish._ | | Electrolytic capacitors seem to have a functional lifespan of | about 10-20 years, transistors _do_ wear out, electromigration is | a problem in chips in the "hundreds of years" span discussed, | and there are all sorts of other interesting failure modes of | "solid state" electronics that mean they're not going to last | hundreds of years without some pretty massive heroics - and | that's when you can repair it at all. | Gordonjcp wrote: | [flagged] | camtarn wrote: | Let me Google that for you: | | "All electrolytic capacitors with non-solid electrolyte age | over time, due to evaporation of the electrolyte. The | capacitance usually decreases and the ESR usually increases. | The normal lifespan of a non-solid electrolytic capacitor of | consumer quality, typically rated at 2000 h/85 degC and | operating at 40 degC, is roughly 6 years. It can be more than | 10 years for a 1000 h/105 degC capacitor operating at 40 | degC. Electrolytic capacitors that operate at a lower | temperature can have a considerably longer lifespan." | | ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague ) | | "Electromigration decreases the reliability of integrated | circuits (ICs). It can cause the eventual loss of connections | or failure of a circuit. Since reliability is critically | important ... the reliability of chips (ICs) is a major focus | of research efforts. ... With increasing miniaturization, the | probability of failure due to electromigration increases ... | In modern consumer electronic devices, ICs rarely fail due to | electromigration effects. ... Nevertheless, there have been | documented cases of product failures due to | electromigration." | | ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration ) | | Before dismissively replying, maybe do your research. | l33t233372 wrote: | Can you explain what you mean? | | In 100,000,000 years I can almost surely guarantee that your | hard drive will be nonexistent. Surely there is a point | between "fresh off the assembly line" and "disintegration" | where the drive can be considered to be "worn out." | jdiff wrote: | Electrolytic capacitors can dry out, boil out, oxidize, | generally break down. There's many failure modes for them | that can be caused by wear, age, or unuse. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | > Nope. | | > Nope. | | > None of these things "wear out". | | Would you perhaps like to present any evidence or even | argument whatsoever? | popotamonga wrote: | My schneider 286@12Mhz from 1990 with 40MB huge hdd still | running fine, all original components. | moffkalast wrote: | Older hardware tends to be more resilient due to wider | traces, which means lower susceptibility to ESD and | electromigration. But eventually the last atom will get | eroded out of a critical trace and the thing will fail. | Nothing lasts forever, especially when made to be as cheap as | possible. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration | yamazakiwi wrote: | I recently had to replace an SSD that was only 3 years old; | it's dead-dead, as in, slowed down one day and then wouldn't | boot. I've never had an HDD die this fast in my life. I know | this is only one example but I'm curious if anyone else has a | similar experience. | Tijdreiziger wrote: | * * * | sleepybrett wrote: | Have a virtual memory pagefile on it? | [deleted] | anthk wrote: | Postmodernism is bullshit. Grow over it. Embrace utilitarism. | Design durable, low powered and hackable computers with easy | protocols to exchange data over a flakey network. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _Embrace utilitarism._ | | As long as _everyone else_ embraces it, we seem to be doomed to | a market economy, that (all its virtues notwithstanding) | unfortunately makes: | | > _Design durable, low powered and hackable computers with easy | protocols to exchange data over a flakey network_ | | not possible. As long as _other people_ also take utilitarian | approach, then the only things we can get are "low powered" | and "flakey network". Durability, hackability and easy | protocols are anathema to those who make money on technology at | scale. | renewiltord wrote: | Ha, possible if all the lunatics who want us to be marked a | Professional Engineer to program have their way. We must fight | them at every turn. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-06 23:00 UTC)