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Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

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Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#101

Post by Dalewyn »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #79
brokenmachine wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

This.

The "files and folders" metaphor never worked even in the heyday of computer literacy, most people never understood it and just dumped all their crap on the desktop.

Seeing as the metaphor did not, does not, and will not work it is only reasonable that personal computing is slowly moving away from it and towards something the users actually want: One singular place to store everything (and I mean everything) and a one-stop quick way to find something in there, organization be damned.

Email is perhaps one of the earliest manifestations of this user desire: Everything goes in the one singular Inbox, and you search for whatever mail you need.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#102

Post by Dalewyn »

yamazakiwi wrote: post #55
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.

SSDs are a consumable, so depending on how much writing you do per day to it you can run it down pretty quickly.

The vast majority of people never write enough for this to become a problem, though.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#103

Post by buggy6257 »

eropple wrote: post #93
2fast4you wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really agree. Programming and gaming are the only things I use my laptop for. I have my iPad for CAD and art, everything else I do on my phone. All my trip planning is done on there, all my finances, everything on the phone.

What CAD tools work well on an iPad? I'd love to try it. Fusion 360 is okay on Windows, but it's pretty bad on a Mac.

Also very interested in this!

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#104

Post by Dalewyn »

zerbin wrote: post #82
atleastoptimal wrote: post #70

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.

I'm not sure you can say that their attraction of youth is actually "natural" - as other subthreads here have suggested, Gen Z is considerably less interested in computing than my (millenial) generation was. When I was a teenager I was torrenting 100% of my media, tweaking and installing VST's in Ableton's Max for Live to make music, hacking my school district's crappy computer security system to get onto a proxy and…

Between hardware and underlying software becoming more capable and reliable, software removing more and more avenues for tinkering with a computer's innards, passion getting replaced with profit, and straight up computing becoming "stuff my mom and dad does", the young of today are rightfully finding greener pastures for inspiration.

I know in my day I had a blast just messing with Windows 95 and Microsoft Office. Yes, really. Just messing in them was as fun, or even more fun than, playing video games. Microsoft Access was my favorite "game". The sheer potential that even my kid brain could see was just mindblowing.

Now? It's not. No more are developers writing for passion, most are writing for profit. No more are we allowed to tinker; to be clear the likes of Windows and Linux still let us, but iOS and Android refuse tinkerers. No more is computing "fashionable" to young minds, it's the stuff old people (read: us) do and that is so not young, come on man!

Times are changing, and we're simply no longer in the front row seats.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#105

Post by korse »

As someone who primarily works with computers in industrial machinery, this doesn't seem all that fanciful.

What breaks the metaphor for me however is the 'computers have no practical use in society' line. Medicine, modern precision manufacturing and transportation have radically changed the quality of life for billions. Without the development of global timekeeping, communications and computing (mainframes at least) life would be much nastier and shorter for many.

Does the inversion also come with all of that baggage?

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#106

Post by BirAdam »

moffkalast wrote: post #52
popotamonga wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, all of the components are less sensitive, not just traces. Also, a lot of the old machines weren’t designed to be cheap.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#107

Post by code_biologist »

eropple wrote: post #93
2fast4you wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really agree. Programming and gaming are the only things I use my laptop for. I have my iPad for CAD and art, everything else I do on my phone. All my trip planning is done on there, all my finances, everything on the phone.

What CAD tools work well on an iPad? I'd love to try it. Fusion 360 is okay on Windows, but it's pretty bad on a Mac.

I've heard good reviews of Shapr3d on iPad. Can't vouch for it myself, but I've heard positive sentiment.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#109

Post by speed_spread »

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.

At lot can be done with pen and paper but if you were rebuilding civilisation from scratch I'd be be happy to have a solar powered computer holding a copy of wikipedia and heaps of documentation to help me put to use any artifacts I'd find from the old world.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#110

Post by Dylan16807 »

sleepybrett wrote: post #71
curtisblaine wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

We stop making specific models, and lose how to make spare parts for those models. We don't lose how to make the machines in general.

This story would be completely different if the old silicon computers were replaced with neo-computers.

Also for anything that uses a standard floppy drive there are cheap and plentiful adapters to use flash storage instead of disks.

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