humans and technology

humans and technology

[Emanuel Berg]

You know the Marxist theory of society etc.
etc.? I you apply that to technology and some
self-knowledge, it seems to click perfectly
with us and Unix and Emacs. Only thing is,
other people will end up with different
technology. Here, there is a notion that some
technology is better than the other. But then
why do people use the inferior technology?
Because they are not as good to begin with?
Why not? Here is where the theory gets shady.
But morals aside, it is a perfect match.
At least for me. But are other people who has
experienced the same perfect match the same as
me? How so? And if you do technology too much,
are you technology as well as human? If yes,
how much do you have to do it? If you reproduce
yourself every day, and a good portion of that
day is technology, and this goes on every day,
where does the line go where you produce
technology and it doesn't produce you?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: humans and technology

[hector]

I think it is good to have something more than "why * doesn't work?"
posts even if this doesn't exactly fit here. Perhaps we should create
"philosophy-gnu-emacs@gnu.org" for this kind of stuff.

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 06:57:52AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> You know the Marxist theory of society etc.
> etc.? I you apply that to technology and some
> self-knowledge, it seems to click perfectly
> with us and Unix and Emacs. Only thing is,
> other people will end up with different
> technology. Here, there is a notion that some
> technology is better than the other. But then
> why do people use the inferior technology?

Well. You should formally define "good"
and "better". Not an easy task.

This is a recurrent question everywhere I look.
The answer is always the same: there is no "good"
but "good in this context" or "good in this case".
For any task (in IT field or outside) that you
have to accomplish you have a good deal of
choices. They do basically the same. But they
differ in the details. Some work only under some
circumstances. Perhaps they are "better" (faster,
easier to deploy) but they have more requirements
than other solutions. So this "inferior" solution
could be better because its requirements are
lower. So you could say that this "inferior" solution
(could be slower) is better because it doesn't
require X to work. If you have X available it is
good to have the faster solution but it could
happen that you don't have X. If you don't have X
the faster solution is worse because it could even
refuse to do anything at all.

So in sum, "good" and "better" are always RELATIVE.

> Because they are not as good to begin with?
> Why not? Here is where the theory gets shady.
> But morals aside, it is a perfect match.
> At least for me. But are other people who has
> experienced the same perfect match the same as
> me? How so? And if you do technology too much,
> are you technology as well as human?

I don't know if this is related to what you are
saying here. I think technology is not good or bad
in itself. It is the way you use it what is good
or bad.

As you say, "morals aside", technology is a
reality. 100 years ago a person didn't have to
decide if mobile phones were good of bad because
they didn't exist. Now we are in a point in
history where we have to deal with something
radically different in our lives. Our way of life
has nothing to do with that of our grandfathers.

Is this good? I don't know. Perhaps many things
about technology are good. But I think there it
brings up a big danger: that we lose our humanity.

> If yes,
> how much do you have to do it? If you reproduce
> yourself every day, and a good portion of that
> day is technology, and this goes on every day,
> where does the line go where you produce
> technology and it doesn't produce you?

It's inevitable. Technology is part of our
world. It affects us.

Let me add some thoughts here. :-)
You see? Smile is not part of technology.
It was there long before computers even
existed. That is human. You don't need a
computer to smile. But computers can
make you smile or get angry.

I think everybody should use Emacs. But it's not possible. Even some
of my closer friends don't use (or even know) it. But I couldn't live
without it :-) It's become a big part of my life.

When Richard Stallman began its development about 35(?) years ago I think
he could not imagine what it would become in the future.

And speaking of "good" and "evil"... is Emacs "better" pr "superior" to
other text editors? Again: it depends. You can do a lot of things with it.
But it's becoming heavy weight. Although people try to make it modular
it's inevitable that it becomes slower (starting time) and consumes more
memory.

Anyway in one thing it is clearly superior: freedom.

Even if it wasn't as "good" as other editors (fast, featured) it still
would be more free. How "good" it is depends on several factors and
the weight of those factors. How much do you value freedom?

Re: humans and technology

[Emanuel Berg]

hector wrote:

> Well. You should formally define "good" and
> "better". Not an easy task.

Have you seen this chart? [1] I have to say
I agree 100% - at least with respect to the
upper echelons. The stuff below I can't assess
because I never used it :)

Actually when I meet a random guy at the gym
and he tells me he is a Java developer I try my
hardest not to show my elitism. It is really
difficult for me to think of a guy using
Windows, Eclipse, and Java as a hacker.
Does not compute! But I suppose he is?

And one could make similar charts for all other
pieces of technology as well. Unix (Linux)
superior to Windows. CLI superior to GUI
(except for CAD, GIS and stuff that are visual
in nature - but even here there is for example
gnuplot! - not "gnu" as in GNU by the way).
Databases: SQL. Documents: LaTeX. And so on.

As for the editor there is one issue of what
editor is better than the other. I didn't use
Vim so I can't tell. Obviously Emacs is more
powerful than Nano and the likes. However the
more important thing is that the editor is not
just an editor, it is the *key* to the whole
computer system! And I believe Emacs is the
number one such key.

> Our way of life has nothing to do with that
> of our grandfathers.

We are genetically the same. But what one does
is so important! If one guy works in the
forest all day and the other writes code...
However if they switched places for a couple of
weeks the programmer would already start to
look, act, and think like a wood chopper. It is
an open question who would adapt more quickly.
I suppose it would depend on the particular
persons, as well.

[1] http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/hierarchy.png

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: humans and technology

[ernobe]

Emanuel Berg <moasen@zoho.com> writes:

> You know the Marxist theory of society etc.
> etc.? I you apply that to technology and some
> self-knowledge, it seems to click perfectly
> with us and Unix and Emacs. Only thing is,
> other people will end up with different
> technology. Here, there is a notion that some
> technology is better than the other. But then
> why do people use the inferior technology?
> Because they are not as good to begin with?
> Why not? Here is where the theory gets shady.
> But morals aside, it is a perfect match.
> At least for me. But are other people who has
> experienced the same perfect match the same as
> me? How so? And if you do technology too much,
> are you technology as well as human? If yes,
> how much do you have to do it? If you reproduce
> yourself every day, and a good portion of that
> day is technology, and this goes on every day,
> where does the line go where you produce
> technology and it doesn't produce you?

I have experienced the same perfect match as you, but you need to
upgrade to Emacs 24.5 (like me) in order to understand that.


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https://archive.org/services/purl/bahai

Re: humans and technology

[Emanuel Berg]

ernobe wrote:

> I have experienced the same perfect match as
> you, but you need to upgrade to Emacs 24.5
> (like me) in order to understand that.

The match isn't that perfect! If it were,
I wouldn't have done ~100 files of
configuration and extention to Emacs...

But actually configurability and extensionness
is a huge part of the (almost) perfect match.
Still, if anyone had done the exact same thing
when I came to Emacs, I like to think that
I would have done something else, rather
than nothing!

This is what I mean. I came to Emacs because
I liked it. I already had some instinctive
Emacs in me. When Emacs opened the doors to do
even more, it is already a blend of my
instinctiveness and what is already there.
You affect Emacs and it affects you.

Do people really have this experience with
Eclipse on Windows? Or is it more like using
a ratchet screwdriver in a toolshop? Gets the
job done, but one-dimensional?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573