🚀 go-pugleaf

On 10 Jun 1994 11:03:38 PST, pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) said:

> In article <RLM.94Jun8062500@helen.surfcty.com> rlm@helen.surfcty.com (Robert L. McMillin) writes:
>> On 07 Jun 1994 11:25:05 PST, pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) said:

> (quote about luddism and the industrial revolution from a book by Noble)

>> Ah, yes, let's turn in our computers because using them has social
>> implications.  Nothing doing.  From medicine to automobiles to banking
>> to manufacturing, computers have taken the drudgery out of lots of
>> operations and made possible things *impossible* before.  Bankers'
>> hours were *necessary* once upon a time: how else would you record the
>> day's transactions but by staying closed part of the day?  Now, of
>> course, we can get money 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Computers
>> make this Net possible (an ironic fact you hardly mention).  E-mail
>> itself is an empowering idea that flattens the militaristic
>> heirarchies inside companies, gutting redundant middle management
>> layers, and giving employees the ability to take charge of their roles
>> within a company.  It is hardly the tool of the oppressor.

> Did you bother to notice where I was posting from? 

You could have been posting from microsoft.com or trw.com.  I don't
care -- you're a sellout at best or a whiny hypocrite at worst.  Stop
living in fear; moreover, stop living in fear and expecting everyone
else to do the same.

> cs.washington.edu
> is hardly a denizen of rampant luddism. I've been hacking systems
> software since I was in college, and I continue to earn my living
> doing playing with leading edge parallel computer systems. 

Goody for you.  I have no use for whiny paranoiacs who can't conceive
of a society that would have ATMs *and* mid-afternoon siestas.  And
none of this longwinded apology for technology makes you any less of a
hypocrite.

> As usual with technological optimists, however, you're all too eager
> to cite the benefits of computers (which for the most part are
> undeniable), and all too eager to forget the rather harder task of
> assessing the downside as well. You overstate the positive impacts too
> - all this egalitarian stuff about email empowering employees, when
> for the vast majority of computer keyboard users, computers are used
> for monitoring their work.

AND?

> You also appear keen to forgo any moral analysis of the kind of
> society that bankers hours versus ATM's tend to foster.

Moral analysis my ass!  Do YOU want to sit around from 2 PM to 5 PM
and add lot of numbers in columns?  Moral?  What's "moral" got to do
with miles of tedious, error-prone manual work?

> Perhaps you've never travelled through a country in which the
> afternoon siesta continues to dominate the pace of life, and thus
> never had the chance to muse on how some of the benefits of some
> kinds of lifestyles might not be like lego pieces - you can't mix
> and match, only choose the whole kit-and-caboodle. Whatever. More on
> this will be published in a long work I'm writing for the WWW right
> now.

Which I am sure will be a ranting tirade against computers and how
eeevil and insidious they really are.

Next thing you know, these damn Luddites will have us burning the
foundries...

Please, do yourself and the rest of us a favor: Stop writing software.
Buy some sheep, a sheepdog, a few hundred acres in Montana, and have a
nice rest of your (backwards, technophobic) life.  And quit whining
about technology that enables you to whine about technology!
-- 
Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
Surf City Software  | Purveying superior SCSI backup/utilities for the Mac
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