Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment • Hacker News Board

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#51

Post by jay_kyburz » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

nh23423fefe wrote: post #3

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…

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.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#52

Post by moffkalast » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:34 PM UTC

popotamonga wrote: post #44

Syonyk wrote: post #33

> 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 g…

My schneider 286@12Mhz from 1990 with 40MB huge hdd still running fine, all original components.

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

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#53

Post by gweinberg » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #34

nh23423fefe wrote: post #3

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…

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 su…

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!

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#54

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

olddustytrail wrote: post #29

actionfromafar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

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.

> 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?

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#55

Post by yamazakiwi » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

Syonyk wrote: post #33

> 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 g…

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.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#56

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

gweinberg wrote: post #53

vanderZwan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 su…

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 windo…

[deleted]

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#57

Post by Karrot_Kream » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:53 PM UTC

tobr wrote: post #13

nh23423fefe wrote: post #3

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…

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.

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.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#58

Post by ModernMech » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:54 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #34

nh23423fefe wrote: post #3

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…

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 su…

The parent is describing an inductive approach to worldbuilding, while you are describing a deductive approach. Two sides of the same coin.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#59

Post by brokenmachine » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:54 PM UTC

beardog wrote: post #26

kwhitefoot wrote: post #2

> 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…

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.

In fairness, modern mobile devices seem to be determined to make how the filesystem works as opaque as possible.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#60

Post by moffkalast » Mon, Mar 06, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

beardog wrote: post #26

kwhitefoot wrote: post #2

> 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…

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.

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.