Item — HN Reader

This is a rant, most of it self-directed, so add salt to taste.

We live in a bubble. A bubble out of which we force ourselves not to look out of. A bubble filled with screens and frequent dopamine hits. We smile, we snicker, we chuckle, and whenever something doesn't agree with us, we instantly reply with our disagreement.

We don't want to look up, outside the window, feel the breeze and see life as it is going on around us. People walking, talking, communicate using many things beside a keyboard and emojis. Mostly using tones of voice, facial expressions, body language. Even more so with things they can touch, feel, read on things which are tangible, not worrying about going out of charge, or talking about formats, or apps.

This is life. Not the bits and bytes. Not the communication protocols, not the APIs, coding methodologies, frameworks, editors, tabs, spaces. Those are for machines to talk to other machines, not to people.

Like @dmit mentioned, analog still rules our world, if only we were to open our eyes. I don't mean analog in the electronic sense, but in the physical sense. There are myriad of colours, not just black and white, let alone greys.

We are still mechanical in our heads, and physical in our hands.

We are not the machines we use. I don't want to write on a screen. I want to write on paper. I want to give it to a machine. Let it do what it's for. Let the person the paper is given to, scribble on it, change it, send it back. I talk to the person and the deal is done. No version control required. If machines are there for both of us to fulfill the tasks we need to do, let them do it properly. That's what they are there for.

Okay, end of rant. I don't know where this is going anyway. But good for Japan to stick to what works. Making machines of people should not be considered development. Making machines for people should be.

2 comments

> The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.

-- Konrad Zuse

Another man very much worth reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum

> His influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while Artificial Intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom. Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes us human. Comprehensive human judgment is able to include non-mathematical factors, such as emotions. Judgment can compare apples and oranges, and can do so without quantifying each fruit type and then reductively quantifying each to factors necessary for comparison.

Good rant. I'm very sympathetic to your dis-ease.

As a kid, I read and embraced Postman's Technolopy and Norman's Psychology of Everyday Things, Things That Make Us Smart (for starters). Transmuted me from a technophile into a humanist. It's been downhill for me ever since.

"We are not the machines we use."

Elon Musk repeated something very smart during his Joe Rogan interview: We're already cyborgs. Pen and paper are advanced technologies. No disrespect: we make the tools which in turn make us.

I really wish more geeks active today were better versed in the history of cybernetics, memetics, automation, technology.

"I talk to the person and the deal is done."

I think you're referring to trust.

A major, recurring mistake geeks make is the technophilic future perfect effort of replacing trust, esteem, relationships with protocols, while ignoring culture, social norms, and basic human nature.

Yet another distributed social media content publishing truthiful moderation peer-to-peer payment scheme, now with better crypto.

Something like Robert's Rules of Order only works because the participants temporarily suspend disbelief and buy-in.

To use your phrasing, that's the bubble that worries me, technology without humanism, which keeps us geeks apart from the general populace, and has now manifested as blowback.