[iDC] The 50-Year Computer

[John Hopkins]

Hi Patrick

>I find it interesting that introducing such a polemic consistently creates this sort of response.

what sort?  glib?  isn't that the point of polemics (Gr. polemikos, war) ... I like glibness when facing warfare ;-]

>Please read closer; note that I say that I have no real expectation of destroying Intel, but perhaps to create another class of computing, and shifting the crux of innovation to software craft.

I think raises the biggest issue that I have with Open Source, if you will, that it is entirely dependent on the existence of (ubiquitous) digital systems to begin with.   I like Open Source-related impulses that leave the digital device wholly behind and move to gardening or localized social activism...  Then you have a truely new way of going.  Another class of computing is simply another class of computing...

>In addition, I also understand that technodeterminism will remain.  I merely polemically question the real value of what we have done, and whether other models could be useful.  
>
>I also argue that in many ways (not all), much of computer use since the 1980's has NOT fundamentally changed, given certain constraints.

why should it, when the human uses are in direct service to the techno-social system.  that system has not changed (its goals).  Although one absolute metric of change is the speed at which we are required to interact with the digital infrastructure.  That HAS changed.  As well as the overall relation of life to that centrally dictated techno-social infrastructure -- dependencies have increased enormously (that of the human on a globe-spanning infrastructural system).

The real  'value' is that we serve that system by giving more and more of our life-time into it (as a distributed and remote presence) and not into more physically localized realities.

>Ned Ludd has not channeled through me, lads. I'm thinking about sustainability, reduction of toxic production, streamlining of ubiquitous computation, futurism vs. 30-year old evolitionary trends, etc. I am not necessarily calling for my slide rule, but perhaps for my Gibsonian "Sandbenders" computer.   While some are thinking that I am being regressive, I feel that this could be very forward thinking, if executed in the proper way.

it is interesting that the discussions do tend to gravitate to the line defined by the polarities of technology or no technology.  Although this is so weak a dialectic device, it is a wonder that it is still used (excepting that there are no other accepted approaches aside from complete techno-determinism -- which is a cover IMHO for techno-utopianism)...  blah blah blah...

& I ain't been hittin' the tipple ... tho' that might improve, temporarily, the textual play, it has far too damaging effects on body...

jh
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John Hopkins :: neoscenes - bridge between eye and soul
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