Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents • Hacker News Board

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#91

Post by dleeftink » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

prometheus76 wrote: post #54

dpkirchner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote also stood out to me, but probably in a different way. It's missing a crucial piece of information: What is the correct way to use the internet? And computers, for that matter? A generous interpretation is that users are expected to take the knowledge and do greater things with it, instead of sitting and clicking, but that obviously doesn't make sense after a few seconds' thought. I'm stumped.

Her quote reminds me of Eternal September[1], when AOL started allowing their users to interact with Usenet. The people who were already there were not happy with this influx of the unwashed masses coming in and breaking stuff and ignoring good manners and the protocols that had been established. In the early days of the internet, there was definitely a different crowd because the barrier to entry was pretty high and…

Unfortunate as it may be, we would be remiss to accept Digg's 2010 exodus as recent, especially in internet years. At the same time, I'd be interested to compare and see what is currently purported to be the 'golden age' and what it ends up being.

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#92

Post by retrac » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

jfarmer wrote: post #20

This is a great book and I quote this 1998 article she wrote for Salon all the time: https://www.salon.com/1998/05/12/feature_321/ "The dumbing-down of programming" > The computer was suddenly revealed as palimpsest. The machine that is everywhere hailed as the very incarnation of the new had revealed itself to be not so new after all, but a series of skins, layer on layer, winding around the messy, evolving idea of…

The modern software environment works, I think, just from the sheer quantity of useful building and patch materials. To run with the building metaphor, it's like having specialized supplies on-hand so you can throw up a passable shed in a weekend with just duct tape and a screwdriver.

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#93

Post by dingnuts » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

delusional wrote: post #89

marcosdumay wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless we inexplicably decide to burn all of our accurate books because of some culture war.

[flagged]

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#94

Post by dleeftink » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #15

Tomte wrote: post #3

From 'Life in Code': "We build our computers the way we build our cities—over time, without a plan, on top of ruins."

Maybe that's the only possible way. More than a few systems have failed from over-planning and under-iterating. And they do say cities are the greatest invention of humankind

I'd say ruins are a precursor for cities to become beautiful--computation concerns similar strolling along age old paths and alleyways.

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#95

Post by debo_ » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

sebstefan wrote: post #18

I think I'm one onanistic "article about engineers (from an engineer)" away from completely losing it

When I feel this way, I think about how many films about filmmakers and books about writers I've experienced.

It doesn't really help, but I do think about it :)

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#96

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

delusional wrote: post #89

marcosdumay wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless we inexplicably decide to burn all of our accurate books because of some culture war.

Has any book-burning movement in history actually succeeded in getting ride of the books?

Because I don't know of any, they manage to destroy a text here or there, but there were always some compatible texts that survived. AFAIK, we really didn't lose useful knowledge to them.

(And let's not forget that today we made life much harder for the book burners.)

What really does destroy knowledge is it becoming useless for a long period of time. As in losing all of CS because nobody can make a computer yet. But we have an instinct to preserve knowledge, even when it's absolutely useless. This has already saved a lot of technology, and it's hard to imagine how some disaster would stop it.

Personally, I have a hard time imagining something that would throw us at the stone (or bronze, or iron) age, but still fail to destroy all the life on Earth.

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#97

Post by chris37879 » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #96

delusional wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless we inexplicably decide to burn all of our accurate books because of some culture war.

Has any book-burning movement in history actually succeeded in getting ride of the books? Because I don't know of any, they manage to destroy a text here or there, but there were always some compatible texts that survived. AFAIK, we really didn't lose useful knowledge to them. (And let's not forget that today we made life much harder for the book burners.) What really does destroy knowledge is it becoming useless for…

Book-burning specifically, no, but the Nazis destroyed a lot of research from a German institute that studied gender issues. Knowledge of the place and some of its research still exists, but a lot of the research was simply gone once the Nazis rose to power. That seems like way less of a liability these days with the internet, but even that is prone to government meddling, and when the people that agree with book burnings run the government, well, there's a very famous prescient book on the topic.

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#98

Post by sixstringtheory » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

dleeftink wrote: post #91

prometheus76 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her quote reminds me of Eternal September[1], when AOL started allowing their users to interact with Usenet. The people who were already there were not happy with this influx of the unwashed masses coming in and breaking stuff and ignoring good manners and the protocols that had been established. In the early days of the internet, there was definitely a different crowd because the barrier to entry was pretty high and…

Unfortunate as it may be, we would be remiss to accept Digg's 2010 exodus as recent, especially in internet years. At the same time, I'd be interested to compare and see what is currently purported to be the 'golden age' and what it ends up being.

> we would be remiss to accept Digg's 2010 exodus as recent, especially in internet years

Why?

> what is currently purported to be the 'golden age'

My guess is that we’re on it right now.

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#99

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #37

agentultra wrote: post #28

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

Re: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its discontents

#100

Post by littlestymaar » Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #37

agentultra wrote: post #28

Earlier 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…

> we've essentially dug up and drilled ALL of the easily available hydrocarbons

And basically every accessible ore deposits as well… You can't reach bronze age if there's no available copper nor tin, you just end up stuck in the stone age forever.