Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could find some vestigial BASIC in the DOS batch language.
for example?
REM for comments
Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
71–80 of 165 posts
Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always been curious if our society were to collapse would the artifacts left behind indicate to a future society how to reconstruct this technology? Is there any object permanence in our creations? I imagine a wanderer silently plumbing their way through the streets of Manhattan on their makeshift catamaran. They're mostly in search of useful resources but they can't help but be intrigued by these little, grey s…
Your comment makes me think you may enjoy the science fiction book 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' by Walter M. Miller (perhaps you already have :-}) It's set at a monastery in the desert post nuclear apocalypse, where scribes copy wiring diagrams and store artifacts like partially destroyed circuit boards without understanding what they are / how they work. And it builds from there.
It also made me think of 'By the Waters of Babylon' by Stephen Vincent Benét. Wikipedia tells me it was also (indeed, originally) published as 'The Place of the Gods'.
Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#73> How much of this is impostor syndrome and how much reality? How different are other fields really? I also feel any new programming task as something foreign, for which I am not ready, basically undoable from my position. But at the same time consider myself able to get into anything and everything, and of fixing and building whatever that can be done. I cannot figure out any straight explanation for such senseless…
I assume tech moves on so fast that you have to rewrite the course every year. But you do have some certifications which go some of the way, for example the sun certifications for Java.. At least you know the holder will have an idea how it fits together under the hood...
Tech moves but often in circles and not in a cumulative way. What I mean is that if you know the basic enduring time-tested principles of algorithms, data structures, tradeoffs, principles like caching, compilers, a bedrock stable programming language or two, you know the concepts of Unix as of 20 years ago, then you are well equipped to be dropped into 2023 or 2026 and get yourself into the context over a few weeks and learn the specifics on the job.
It's not like the framework churn is so important to remember. You can skip a lot of what happened between 10 and 5 years ago. So two things matter: the long term basics and the very recent specific permutations of it.
Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#74>The project begins in the programmer’s mind with the beauty of a crystal. The knowledge I am to represent in code seems lovely in its structuredness. For a time, the world is a calm, mathematical place. […] Yes, I understand. Yes, it can be done. Yes, how straightforward. Oh yes. I see. […] Then something happens. The irregularities of human thinking start to emerge.
It's ok, so-called "software development methodologies" solve this problem by making sure that the project begins in the programmer's mind in just as chaotic and irregular a state as it will eventually end up once the code has been written.
Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I think that we should resolve the climate change crisis by reducing excess atmospheric carbon by seeding the oceans with iron. Oceanic iron seeding results in plankton blooms that consume atmospheric carbon. When the plankton dies, it accumulates on the seafloor. Over geologic time scales, the accumulated plankton will turn into hydrocarbons, renewing the supply of cheap fuels for a post-human civilizati…
We can't even switch to renewables because that would make some capital owners slightly less money and you're thinking of civilisations millions of years in the future...
Where I live, it's because the taxpayers would have to pay too much and would be exposed to a lot of outside risk (it's usually not that sunny here, and we don't have space for wind turbines nor where to landfill the replaced blades).
Here it's the capital owners pushing renewables because it's one of the easiest, cheapest, least objectionable (in case of solar) and least risky energy projects you can build on almost any useless piece of land (everywhere is near the grid in this country), but they just can't fulfill the demands of the state-owned energy company with their solar arrays and wind turbines. Hydro is out of the question, the water-environmentalists hate that - for good reasons I have to say.
There is a nearby country that "did" (legislated) the switch... In result, they are the most polluting ones in every metric (per capita, per kWh, per km^2) while having the most expensive electricity on the continent; all metrics are getting worse every year there. Not a good look for the switch, certainly doesn't make most voters in my country motivated to even try - and you'd need to convince half the country. Right now the support is around 5-10%.
In conclusion, given that both our worlds coexist at the same time - I think it's not that simple to switch and wouldn't be looking for the reason in either capitalists or states. Perhaps the technology is just not ready for a full-scale switch yet.
Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#76Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#77I encountered Close to the Machine by chance in my university's library, many years ago. I flipped through the first few pages and was quickly hooked. Definitely a great read.
Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always been curious if our society were to collapse would the artifacts left behind indicate to a future society how to reconstruct this technology? Is there any object permanence in our creations? I imagine a wanderer silently plumbing their way through the streets of Manhattan on their makeshift catamaran. They're mostly in search of useful resources but they can't help but be intrigued by these little, grey s…
> I've always been curious if our society were to collapse would the artifacts left behind indicate to a future society how to reconstruct this technology? Fundamentally, if there is a collapse, future societies have a VERY tough row to hoe ... we've essentially dug up and drilled ALL of the easily available hydrocarbons and moved the bulk of our science and technology to storage that requires that level of science a…
What a coincidence, I had that discussion with my friends yesterday.
We came to conclusions that the scenarios of rebuilding society back up are based on the type of collapse. The greater drop (destruction events) and greater time gap before rebuilding can start anew the harder it would get.
A dark age collapse - worst case scenario - where people slowly loose knowledge over generations - due to lack of institutions to protect the knowledge, sounds like a game over scenario. Small clusters of agrarian people would not have resources to support an engineering department tasked with preserving knowledge that is useless for time being.
Slowly the tech that could have been re-used or restarted would deteriorate beyond usability, and then beyond repeatability.
Its a scary scenario, probably good basis for a book series... there is probably plenty of novels written with that scenario already ;)
Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've always been curious if our society were to collapse would the artifacts left behind indicate to a future society how to reconstruct this technology? Fundamentally, if there is a collapse, future societies have a VERY tough row to hoe ... we've essentially dug up and drilled ALL of the easily available hydrocarbons and moved the bulk of our science and technology to storage that requires that level of science a…
23 years or so of lost knowledge can be regained in the grand scheme of things. But yes, the lack of easy access to coal and oil would be a problem. Maybe the next civilization will be more careful. That's why I think we should all be trying to help keep society going. I try to do my bit. I just wish the preppers, survivalists, deniers would get involved in their community and try to save it too.
I guess I'm kind of thinking of it from the point of view that of all the technologies that we are inventing to allow civilization to survive without coal and oil are the most likely to be lost.
Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always been curious if our society were to collapse would the artifacts left behind indicate to a future society how to reconstruct this technology? Is there any object permanence in our creations? I imagine a wanderer silently plumbing their way through the streets of Manhattan on their makeshift catamaran. They're mostly in search of useful resources but they can't help but be intrigued by these little, grey s…
> I've always been curious if our society were to collapse would the artifacts left behind indicate to a future society how to reconstruct this technology? Fundamentally, if there is a collapse, future societies have a VERY tough row to hoe ... we've essentially dug up and drilled ALL of the easily available hydrocarbons and moved the bulk of our science and technology to storage that requires that level of science a…
On the other hand, they get some high-concentrated storages of refined materials, and we will leave lots of those rune-engraved panels that emit an unnatural power when exposed to light.
Anyway, unless we are talking about some really unprecedentedly disaster, we'll leave plenty of paper books to help them understand those things and bootstrap their society.