Live data from Hacker News

Things computer science tells us about bureaucrats

lemire.me

1–5 of 5 posts

Re: Things computer science tells us about bureaucrats

#2
Amusing but unilluminating. These analogies seem divided between banalities that were already well understood before computer science even existed (e.g. "pipelining", which wouldn't have been a big surprise to Henry Ford) and fairly tortured parallels where the computer science concepts don't really predict anything useful.

Hate to be a reflexive critic but many of us in CS who were around for the 90s got a bit weary of those in our profession who decided that anyone with a bit of tech knowledge was now a big authority on practically every damn thing - economics, social science, politics, sex, you name it.

Re: Things computer science tells us about bureaucrats

#3
On a similar note...

Man I can hardly wait for the day bureaucratic processes are mostly automated with human input at a minimum, only as required. Everything will become so much more efficient and I bet our rate of progress would increase exponentially. Just imagine what we could accomplish without all of the mundane bs in between!

Re: Things computer science tells us about bureaucrats

#4

Amusing but unilluminating. These analogies seem divided between banalities that were already well understood before computer science even existed (e.g. "pipelining", which wouldn't have been a big surprise to Henry Ford) and fairly tortured parallels where the computer science concepts don't really predict anything useful. Hate to be a reflexive critic but many of us in CS who were around for the 90s got a bit weary…

To paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes a humorous article is just a humorous article."

Re: Things computer science tells us about bureaucrats

#5

Amusing but unilluminating. These analogies seem divided between banalities that were already well understood before computer science even existed (e.g. "pipelining", which wouldn't have been a big surprise to Henry Ford) and fairly tortured parallels where the computer science concepts don't really predict anything useful. Hate to be a reflexive critic but many of us in CS who were around for the 90s got a bit weary…

To paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes a humorous article is just a humorous article."

Oops, you are correct. This clearly pressed a button of mine; something that apparently switched off irony while switching on ire. Similar articles were deployed with total seriousness during the Web 1.0 boom, sad to say.