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Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

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Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#81

Post by nickpsecurity »

Mz wrote: post #68
qbrass wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If kids are in dire need of entertainment, they can read a book or something. There's no obligation to provide people with any form of entertainment they desire.

Playing games and other "frivolous" activities are a primary source of learning computer literacy for children. If you say poor kids can't play games on a public computer, you are putting them at a serious disadvantage compared to their wealthier peers, who are much more likely to have access to computers at home and generally have more computer time and latitude. You are putting an additional burden of restriction o…

I see where you're going with this. The benefits you're getting at is worthwhile if the software brings those benefits. Most of what kids are doing on games isn't like the other things they'll be doing. The games are just designed to suck up their time if anything making them better at doing that. Lots of their fun apps, esp social media, are the same. Here's a nice article by an educator on how kids don't know how to use computers despite all the time they spend on them:

http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13506283

You'd have to curate the experience to do something that forces them to learn necessary skills. I've seen those skills dressed up as games or something on occasion. Most fun apps don't do that, though.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#82

Post by sillysaurus3 »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #81
Mz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing games and other "frivolous" activities are a primary source of learning computer literacy for children. If you say poor kids can't play games on a public computer, you are putting them at a serious disadvantage compared to their wealthier peers, who are much more likely to have access to computers at home and generally have more computer time and latitude. You are putting an additional burden of restriction o…

I see where you're going with this. The benefits you're getting at is worthwhile if the software brings those benefits. Most of what kids are doing on games isn't like the other things they'll be doing. The games are just designed to suck up their time if anything making them better at doing that. Lots of their fun apps, esp social media, are the same. Here's a nice article by an educator on how kids don't know how t…

True, but the vast majority of anything is bad. When I was a kid I spent many years playing an old roleplaying game called Underlight: https://underlight.com/ It sparked an interest in creative writing.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#83

Post by DashRattlesnake »

floatingatoll wrote: post #60
Chaebixi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical "the active MetaFilter community" is actually representative of "the MetaFilter community." It seems like is just the fraction who likes or at least tolerates the way it is now.

I wouldn’t know if it is or not. You could poll them, but they’re inactive, so they wouldn’t see the poll.

Metafilter has certainly alienated a lot of its community. You can see it whenever it comes up, in a forum outside of Metafilter. Some of its old users show up and often don't have nice things to say. I used to read it (more as a lurker), and remember noticing one day that many of the fun and interesting users had left (verified by checking accounts that I'd remembered). Eventually I left too, after I realized it wasn't a positive thing anymore.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#84

Post by DashRattlesnake »

sien wrote: post #59
arkitaip wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been no decline in quality and blaming cortex is utter bullshit. My guess is that the haters never liked mefi in the first place and are abusing the change in management to attack the site.

Blaming Cortex is nonsense. But there are people commenting who say they have visited the site for a decade and got bored of it when it became an echo chamber. Perhaps all sites like it decline. Slashdot, Kuro5hin and many others are a sad shadow of what they used to be. Maybe HN in 5-10 years will be pretty sad too.

> Kuro5hin

It's finally dead!

http://kuro5hin.org

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#85

Post by Mz »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #81
Mz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing games and other "frivolous" activities are a primary source of learning computer literacy for children. If you say poor kids can't play games on a public computer, you are putting them at a serious disadvantage compared to their wealthier peers, who are much more likely to have access to computers at home and generally have more computer time and latitude. You are putting an additional burden of restriction o…

I see where you're going with this. The benefits you're getting at is worthwhile if the software brings those benefits. Most of what kids are doing on games isn't like the other things they'll be doing. The games are just designed to suck up their time if anything making them better at doing that. Lots of their fun apps, esp social media, are the same. Here's a nice article by an educator on how kids don't know how t…

From the article:

The parents seem to have some vague concept that spending hours each evening on Facebook and YouTube will impart, by some sort of cybernetic osmosis, a knowledge of PHP, HTML, JavaScript and Haskell.

And you posit that their computer literacy will go up if we start throwing them off the public computers so they can't even use Facebook and Youtube?

Your argument that they aren't so hot currently in no way rebuts my assertion that if you start throwing poor kids off the internet at public libraries they will be left even further behind than they already are currently.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#86

Post by bscphil »

wwweston wrote: post #76
arkitaip wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mefi has always been to the left, everyone knows it. Just because it doesn't align your your politics doesn't make it bad. Probably does you good to get out of your own bubble.

It's always been to the left, which has suited me pretty well, better than some of the glibertarian and technoutopian edges of HN. But I think the moderation had a lighter hand and less of a political slant in the past. And it used to be easier to make an argument against the grain and get it engaged on its merits (on top of the usual clever mockery and insults). It's not as if there isn't anything good to be gleaned…

>And when stuff like the Google Memo and subsequent firing comes up, I know that even if I think the Metafilter gestalt is wrong about a handful of things among other opinions that I agree with, and I think can articulate a good thoughtful case that might be worth considering.... I know it's not a good idea to put in the time there.

That thread [1] was particularly hostile, so much so that I'm shocked to see so many people here defending Metafilter's culture. Even though I largely agree with their politics, I don't visit Metafilter very much because the echo chamber is simply too bad. One user in that thread was particularly bullying - they had 98 comments in the thread (nearly 1 in 10), and over 2300 favorites from other users. Politically I'm well to the left of the median commenter on Hacker News, but I've found Metafilter to be unbearably toxic whenever sensitive issues come up.

[1] http://www.metafilter.com/168651/Misogyny-based-on-flawed-er...

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#87

Post by dang »

vikasg wrote: post #21
dang wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief! I'm not sure where you got that, but https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&date... and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html .

I don't dispute that moderation exists on HN. I just think MeFi makes better trade-offs.

How you got from there to 'absolute free speech' seems opaque.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#88

Post by nickpsecurity »

Mz wrote: post #85
nickpsecurity wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see where you're going with this. The benefits you're getting at is worthwhile if the software brings those benefits. Most of what kids are doing on games isn't like the other things they'll be doing. The games are just designed to suck up their time if anything making them better at doing that. Lots of their fun apps, esp social media, are the same. Here's a nice article by an educator on how kids don't know how t…

From the article: The parents seem to have some vague concept that spending hours each evening on Facebook and YouTube will impart, by some sort of cybernetic osmosis, a knowledge of PHP, HTML, JavaScript and Haskell. And you posit that their computer literacy will go up if we start throwing them off the public computers so they can't even use Facebook and Youtube? Your argument that they aren't so hot currently in n…

My argument isn't against throwing them off the Internet: it's against keeping them on things that don't develop the improvements in thinking or skill we want. I deal with the masses on a daily basis. Most of them don't gain serious skills by screwing around with the popular tech. It's a distraction preventing that. Most of them that did get skills did so by ignoring that in favor of putting time and work in. It was usually drudgery but sometimes a mix of that and fun. I see a small percentage of people on computers at the local library doing those things.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#89

Post by jessamyn »

arkitaip wrote: post #3
jessamyn wrote: post #2

Hey!

Thanks for everything you've done over at Mefi. Do you think we'll ever again see you as a mod?

Don't think so. I really enjoyed my time there and I still hang out there a lot but it's pretty important to me to be doing "library things" and I couldn't do that and devote the time to modding that the job deserved.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#90

Post by Mz »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #88
Mz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: The parents seem to have some vague concept that spending hours each evening on Facebook and YouTube will impart, by some sort of cybernetic osmosis, a knowledge of PHP, HTML, JavaScript and Haskell. And you posit that their computer literacy will go up if we start throwing them off the public computers so they can't even use Facebook and Youtube? Your argument that they aren't so hot currently in n…

My argument isn't against throwing them off the Internet: it's against keeping them on things that don't develop the improvements in thinking or skill we want. I deal with the masses on a daily basis. Most of them don't gain serious skills by screwing around with the popular tech. It's a distraction preventing that. Most of them that did get skills did so by ignoring that in favor of putting time and work in. It was…

I was arguing against simply throwing kids off of public computers willy nilly. I was not advocating actively promoting the pursuit of such activities. There is a difference.
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