[HN Gopher] Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer (1987) [pdf]
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Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer (1987) [pdf]
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 173 points
Date : 2025-05-03 22:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (classes.matthewjbrown.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (classes.matthewjbrown.net)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Past discussions
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42636195 - 3 months ago, 10
| comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31808269 - 3 years ago, 169
| comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2108463 - 14 years ago, 11
| comments
| jes5199 wrote:
| huh. I'm aware of this author for other reasons - he's popular
| among some carbon-capture enthusiasts. This... colors my opinion.
| tom_ wrote:
| I'd never heard of them before! But I'm sure some people that
| disapprove will come along soon enough to balance things out.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| I know the author from Unsettling America.
| wwweston wrote:
| I have questions about whether Berry would own that
| relationship even if (big if) he were convinced carbin capture
| was beneficial.
|
| But more importantly -- chances are VERY strong that Berry
| transcends most of the categories you're familiar with and a
| few that you aren't. He's an outstanding voice, and a worthy
| thinker for anyone to sharpen their own mind with or against.
| Though even where I part ways with him -- for example, I was
| _always_ going to buy a computer (and more computers) -- I
| usually discover that there was a tradeoff and value worth
| defending on the other side of my choice.
|
| Also, the overlap between his standards for technology and open
| source values is pretty high.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Wendell Berry is a pretty prolific activist and writer, and has
| been for more than half a century.
|
| You would do well to fully understand his own stances before
| judging him based on how other people choose to interpret him.
|
| You might come to the same conclusions, but they would be
| defensible at the very least.
| analog31 wrote:
| An amusing anecdote: I was in grad school in 1987. The university
| had a campus computer store, which gave out a pamphlet: "Should I
| get a computer?" It listed many pro's and con's, nothing
| surprising for the era. I already had a computer. The thing that
| stuck with me, was the advice: "Don't expect a computer to
| organize you. If you have a messy desk, you will have a messy
| computer."
|
| Sure as shootin', even to this day, I still have a messy
| computer.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Nevertheless, I go through life with the persistent unconscious
| belief that if I buy products-for-organizing I will become
| organized. :p
| jaredsohn wrote:
| In a similar way, buying exercise equipment gets you in
| shape.
| callc wrote:
| If you buy enough equipment then the act of carrying the
| equipment inside will get you in shape.
|
| Just like my bogo sort. It'll get there eventually.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The most exercise I've ever had is solo assembling a 295
| pound Rogue Fitness Monster Lite power rack and raising
| it from the horizontal position I assembled it in to the
| vertical position.
|
| I figured after that much effort I needn't exercise ever
| again. I sold it the next week at a loss (cheapest hobby
| I've ever had). Although to be fair I didn't realize at
| the time that I needed to buy the barbell and weights
| too. Lesson learned: stick to the monthly gym membership
| that I will never use.
|
| The second most exercise I've ever had is solo raising my
| Grizzly 14" bandsaw to standing. Also never used, but at
| least I never had the heart to sell it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's the thing: you have to disassembly your gym
| equipment after you finish assembling it. Make sure you
| keep a set of boxes to put it back on.
| layer8 wrote:
| And buying books makes you smart and knowledgable. It's all
| so easy!
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Reminds me of the lottery... "If you aren't happy before the
| money, you won't be happy after". Most people interviewed are
| not happy after relatively large wins, almost all report being
| isolated from family in the best cases and deeply resented and
| resentful more often than not.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "You know you won't win -- but you might!" -- Terry-Thomas on
| playing the lottery
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| _"Your odds are winning are exactly the same if you don't
| play."_
| teekert wrote:
| True, however, anything not digital gets lost. And I may have
| many messy backups but I will find that one 15 y/o photo or doc
| when I need it.
| uwagar wrote:
| i find my computer is better organised than my desk.
| luotuoshangdui wrote:
| That's true. But at least you can do a search on a computer.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| > You can't grep dead trees.
| Ozarkian wrote:
| The world's librarians at least gave it a good effort. Do
| you still remember all those card catalogs at the library?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Not just that, I remember learning all of the different
| systems and being told how invaluable it was for
| research.
| timcobb wrote:
| I caught what must have been the last itty bitty tail of
| that. I was a 3rd grader in 1993 and were taught all
| about the card catalog and the Dewey decimal system and
| taking notes on note cards and organizing them in
| notecard boxes and how important it all was for research.
| I'm glad we moved on from that. For me, it was a drag.
| jolmg wrote:
| IIRC from when I visited a library earlier this year,
| they were still being used in the genealogy section.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Yes, I _remember_ them but also observe that we've moved
| on from those trays of cards in narrow drawers systems
| (and good riddance!).
|
| Those cards are no replacement for literal grep, of
| course. They were a search across a tiny summary of the
| contents, albeit a fairly structured one (which is
| helpful for some searches).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| dead trees dont change your search results and insert ads,
| add tracking and profiling
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Most books where that is important have an index.
| layer8 wrote:
| More often than not they are a bit lackluster,
| unfortunately.
| 0x1ceb00da wrote:
| After reading pdfs for a few years one day I bought a
| physical book. I remember looking at the corner of the page
| for time and thinking about CTRL-Fing for something.
| rollcat wrote:
| > Don't expect a computer to organize you. If you have a messy
| desk, you will have a messy computer.
|
| That's why Google and GMail got so successful. Don't sort;
| search.
| apozem wrote:
| I love using note-taking apps for this reason. They are a
| bottomless bucket into which you can throw unlimited
| unorganized thoughts. When you need them later, simply
| search.
| jagaerglad wrote:
| which do you recommend? I do "note to self" in messaging
| apps and the search is alright but I guess there are better
| alternatives
| al_borland wrote:
| For a long time, this was certainly true, and still is to an
| extent.
|
| I do find that software is beginning to do a good job of
| automatically organizing content when it has enough metadata to
| do so.
|
| Photos are the best example of this I've see. I use Apple
| Photos, and from the effort I put in (none), it's just a large
| shoebox full of pictures. However, the software organizes
| everything by date, location, type, subject, etc, all at the
| same time. This makes it pretty effortless to find anything
| very quickly. Trying to create this level of organization
| manually would be borderline impossible, and require a person
| devoting to their life to organizing this one specific aspect
| of their life.
|
| There was recently a death in the family and everyone was
| looking for photos. I was able to pull up every picture of this
| person I had, spanning nearly 20+ years, in seconds. Others who
| didn't use the software effectively spent hours and days
| manually scrolling through their photo grid. I attempted to
| tell them how they could make it easier, but they weren't in
| the mood to deal with technology lessons, understandably so, so
| I didn't try and press it.
| andy99 wrote:
| Others who didn't use the software effectively spent hours
| and days manually scrolling through their photo grid. I
| attempted to tell them how they could make it easier, but
| they weren't in the mood to deal with technology lessons,
| understandably so, so I didn't try and press it.
|
| Doesn't that demonstrate the point?
| al_borland wrote:
| They spent years actively avoiding letting the software do
| its thing in several ways. In many cases putting forth more
| effort to avoid letting the software make their life
| easier. Their rejection of technology is what led to the
| struggle.
|
| For example, I clicked a button 16 years ago for face
| detection, and in 16 years they didn't do that and didn't
| want to. I use iCloud photo library so I have access to all
| my pictures everywhere, while they have fractured libraries
| on various hard drives (that I don't think are backed up
| anywhere else).
|
| Turning on face detection any time in the last 16 years and
| keeping their library together, solves the problem and
| creates less work. And sure, I end up paying $2.99/month
| for extra storage, but that seems cheap when factoring in
| the time they spend trying to avoid it, not to mention the
| calls I've gotten when they think a drive isn't working and
| they are crying, because they think they just lost
| everything. I'd pay the $3 for them if it meant never
| getting a call like that again, where I'm bracing to hear
| someone died, because they are crying so much they can't
| get the words out.
|
| Several times when I pulled up pictures they have asked me
| how I'm able to do it so quickly. It's not exceptional
| organization or effort on my part, I'm simply using the
| software. I took 10 minutes, one time, to play around with
| the new Photos app when they revamped it, instead of just
| complaining that it changed, like most of the internet.
| There is no magic. Learn how the tools work, and use the
| tools. When you do that, the organization can often take
| care of itself.
| ncruces wrote:
| We (at least I) compensate for that by having 10k photos on
| it, which again makes it impossible to find anything. And if
| you decide to cull them because it's just too much, it's a
| chore.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| My previous manual organisation of digital photos into
| directories on my home server was quite time consuming. I got
| an iPhone a few years ago and started using Apple Photos.
| Like you, I put no effort into organising the photos - other
| than adding some descriptive metadata to a few photos.
| Apple's organisation and their user interface allow me to
| quickly find any photo that I remember taking. However, I'm
| curious about what you mean by "didn't use the software
| effectively".
|
| Off Topic: one other thing I really like about Apple Photos
| is that I get to see my photos on the Apple TV when
| screensaver kicks in.
| ViktorRay wrote:
| It's neat how this magazine printed the essay along with the
| responses of people to it. Many of those response letters are
| quite biting (in a good way).
|
| Sometimes I feel disheartedned when I see harsh internet comments
| in response to an essay. For example, sometimes Paul Graham posts
| essays and people on Hacker News post blistering biting
| responses. I guess we should remember the letters that people
| used to send to magazine essays like this and remember that
| sometimes these harsh responses are par for the course when
| writing essays...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The published magazine letters are likely curated. If nothing
| else, they were also posted by (snail) mail, not instantaneous
| emogi-laden adTech-fueling online ragelettes.
|
| An elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
| abe_m wrote:
| I find it funny the old "I'm so feminist" prose thinking
| they're empowering women, while their actually demeaning the
| work the wife did. One comment from Toby Koosman directly lumps
| the wife in with servants.
|
| Published work (writing) gets better with an editor helping, so
| she is providing valuable work, that even today computers can't
| engage in. Are the ideas expressed clearly? Does the piece make
| sense overall. Is the narrative properly built. Are their weird
| parts hanging around that get in the way of the intended
| message?
|
| You have a couple that is engaging in each other's ideas,
| discussing issues that are most likely of interest to both of
| them. People often couple up who share a view on how to live,
| so it is likely that the wife is just as into the low tech
| lifestyle as he is. There exist women who like the rural and
| homesteading lifestyle.
|
| The overall tone of the comment section is pretty disrespectful
| towards the wife.
| milliams wrote:
| > If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as
| that of the body.
|
| Am I missing something here?
| jml7c5 wrote:
| It's an excessively brief way of saying that the nutrients we
| consume ultimately come from the sun. It caught me off guard
| for a moment, too.
| echoangle wrote:
| Then basically every form of energy humanity uses except
| nuclear is from the sun. Oil is also plant- and animal-based
| if you go back far enough.
| zahlman wrote:
| Not to mention, the point of using "solar energy" as we
| normally conceive of it is to avoid CO2 emissions, but
| humans exhale CO2.
| Liftyee wrote:
| Though all the carbon we eat eventually traces back to
| plants which absorbed equal CO2 from the atmosphere... so
| it's technically carbon neutral.
| svara wrote:
| It's just carbon neutral, not "technically" carbon
| neutral.
|
| The reason we even care about CO2 emissions is that
| industrial emissions reconnect carbon reservoirs that
| were disconnected from the atmosphere for millions of
| years, i.e. underground oil, gas and coal deposits, back
| to the atmosphere. Not that CO2 in itself is harmful in
| any way.
| zahlman wrote:
| The fact that we have ~8 billion people now vs ~1 billion
| in 1800 does make a difference to the equation, in terms
| of our own respiration and not just our deliberate use of
| fossil fuels. Admittedly it's minor, and I don't know
| what's happened to other biomass in that time. But still.
| The point is: having people eat more so that they could
| pedal a stationary bike hooked up to an electric
| generator, would not give "clean" power at the margin.
| hollerith wrote:
| No, you are not getting what people are trying to tell
| you: growing the food for the extra 7 billion completely
| cancels out the co2 emitted from the 7 billion pairs of
| lungs. We know that because the C in that emitted CO2 all
| comes from food eaten by the person at some point in the
| person's life.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| I think you might be missing the point too. Yes, the
| carbon in the food we eat is where the carbon in our
| breath comes from. But the carbon that we used to get the
| ingredients in that food didn't certainly come from the
| atmosphere (e.g. half of the nitrogen used in agriculture
| comes from fossil fuels). You can't be a perfectly
| optimal salad eating machine. One of your fellow humans
| will ruin the equation the moment they buy produce from
| the modern supply chain.
| hollerith wrote:
| No, all the carbon in food plants comes from CO2 from the
| atmosphere. (Ditto nitrogen by the way: the natural gas
| used in making nitrogen fertilizers is a source of
| hydrogen and possibly reaction energy, but not a
| significant source of N.)
| Skunkleton wrote:
| > No, all the carbon in food plants comes from CO2 from
| the atmosphere.
|
| Yes, this is what I said.
|
| > the natural gas used in making fertilizer is a source
| of hydrogen and energy, but not a significant source of
| N.
|
| There is no nitrogen at all in natural gas.
|
| Plants cannot use atmospheric nitrogen on their own. They
| depend on either bacteria or humans to create some usable
| form of nitrogen. Any carbon captured in a plant that
| depended on a fossil fuel source of nitrogen cannot be
| considered carbon neutral, unless you draw a useless
| system boundary.
| svara wrote:
| > Any carbon captured in a plant that depended on a
| fossil fuel source of nitrogen cannot be considered
| carbon neutral, unless you draw a useless system
| boundary.
|
| What? That sounds really confused.
|
| "Carbon neutral" in this context means a process that
| shuttles an atom of carbon around in a closed loop
| between the atmosphere and living organic matter.
|
| To paraphrase what you're saying, human agriculture is
| not carbon neutral, so human breathing contributes to
| climate change, because humans require agriculture.
|
| It's the kind of statement that is maybe technically
| correct if you look at it from the right perspective, but
| totally unhelpful to understanding ecological flows of
| atoms.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| We are carbon neutral against the earth as a whole. The
| problem is that sequestered carbon is now in the
| atmosphere. It doesn't matter how many people are
| breathing out carbon. It matters where that carbon came
| from, and where it ends up. Of course we now have so many
| humans that the majority of them are dependent on fossil
| fuels to survive, and as others have pointed out, not
| just for energy.
| layer8 wrote:
| This lessens my motivation of losing weight, because the
| actual weight loss comes largely from the carbon we
| breathe out.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Where did the uranium come from? My assumption is it's
| supernova ejection, so it comes from a different star.
| layer8 wrote:
| Geothermal energy and tidal power don't come from the sun
| either. Hydroelectricity is half sun (evaporation) half
| Earth's gravity. (Well, one could argue that without the
| sun we wouldn't have liquid oceans.)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Ironically, much if not most food we eat is dependent on
| fossil-fuel energy, largely through nitrogen fertiliser
| (natural-gas based), but also pesticides, mechanised
| agriculture, and the distribution network's transport, cold-
| chain, and retail elements.
|
| That's not a defence of fossil fuels so much as noting that
| Berry's arguments here sits a little loosely with reality.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Did you miss the part where he farms with a horse as a
| beast of burden?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Most of use don't.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| His lifestyle - activism included - is a fantasy of
| pastoral individualism which is only possible because
| science and technology keep the lights on for everyone
| around him.
|
| _He_ still doesn 't use a computer, and his wife still
| uses a typewriter to transcribe his rustic hand-hewn
| longhand.
|
| But after _that_ the words are typed into a computer by
| another assistant.
|
| Would a return to small-scale farms and communities be a
| good thing? Of course. But he's blaming "lazy city folks"
| when the real culprits are corporate raiders and would-be
| plantation owners.
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-
| highlight/2019/10/2/20862854/wendell...
| DangitBobby wrote:
| The dubious position that being forced to participate in
| society invalidates his activism is addressed in response
| to reader letters, and so are consumers who consider
| themselves blameless cogs of the capitalist machine. Have
| you seen the web comic that goes something like:
|
| > A: I wish to improve society somewhat.
|
| > B: And yet you participate in society. Curious.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm addressing his argument rather than his lifestyle.
|
| More to the point, Berry's lifestyle _is_ in large part
| an argument. I 'd agree it's not _scalable_ (which was a
| large part of what I 'd critiqued him for earlier), but
| it _does_ reflect an ethos, one whose principle goal is
| explicitly _not_ "scale".
| tankenmate wrote:
| "Finally, it seems to me that none of my correspondents
| recognizes the innovativeness of my essay. If the use of a
| computer is a new idea, then a newer idea is not to use one."
|
| Hardly a new idea, I'm fairly certain that Berry had heard of the
| Luddites, maybe he didn't realise he was hewing as close a course
| as he was.
| roschdal wrote:
| The list of reasons for using new technology seems reasonable:
|
| 1. It should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
|
| 2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it
| replaces.
|
| 3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than
| the one it replaces.
|
| 4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
|
| 5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as
| that of the body.
|
| 6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence,
| provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
|
| 7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as
| possible.
|
| 8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store
| that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
|
| 9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already
| exists, including family and community relationships.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Is much as I appreciate Berry's work and writing, I'd actually
| look to that list as a foundation of counterarguments, and
| possibly, alternate rationales.
|
| Many (though not all) innovations benefit by scale. This would
| include freshwater viaducts, transportation canals, sewerage
| systems, and mechanised agriculture (even at modest levels).
|
| Many technologies are _less_ expensive at scale. Berry 's
| beloved typewriter is more expensive than a quill pen, as one
| of his respondents notes. Computers rather famously have fallen
| tremendously in price:performance (though we've also bumped up
| the minimum acceptable performance level).
|
| Some technologies are truly _transformational_. Going back
| before computers, and in the realm of information storage,
| retrieval and distribution, I could point to the lowly index
| card, reversable bindings (which made subscription updates to
| information possible, as with encyclopedias, business
| directories, manuals, specifications, and the like), and the
| printing press and moveable type themselves. Computers fit into
| this continuum, to which we could add telecommunications
| (signal flares, optical and electrical telegraphs, the
| telephone, broadcast and cable radio and television, packet-
| switched communications, as well as automated data systems,
| databases, revision control systems, and wikis).
|
| Reparability is fine, and I'm strongly opposed to _unnecessary
| additional barriers to repair_ (as the Right to Repair folks
| are correctly fighting). But again there are cases where the
| complexity and maintenance costs are offset by the increased
| capabilities. It 's ironic to note that the computers of 1985
| which Berry writes of are _extremely_ repairable by
| contemporary standards (presuming you can find, or fabricate,
| replacement parts).
|
| I could go on.
|
| Mind that I'm _sympathetic_ to Berry 's points, and I'd be
| inclined to make similar arguments against much _current_
| technology. As Douglas Adams said:
|
| _Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and
| ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world
| works._
|
| _Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and
| thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can
| probably get a career in it._
|
| _Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the
| natural order of things._
|
| (As quoted by Cory Doctorow:
| <https://www.frankenbook.org/pub/ive-create-a-
| monster/release...>, also at
| <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams>.)
|
| I'm also in general agreement with Berry's meta-argument: we
| should be _mindful_ of what technologies we introduce into our
| lives.
|
| And as much as I like typewriters, I'm typing this on a
| computer.
|
| But _not_ one of those newfangled mobile abominations.
| al_borland wrote:
| While those things may not have been true in 1987, many of them
| are true today, now that computers have had several decades to
| evolve.
|
| 1. Cost is arguable today, as cheap computers exist, and
| quality typewriters have become more expensive. A cheap
| computer will work better than a beat up old typewriter.
|
| 2. A modern laptop, tablet, or phone is much smaller than a
| typewriter.
|
| 3. A computer is demonstrably better than a typewriter, by
| several orders of magnitude, assuming the user has electricity
| and a printer (if one of their goals to end up with a printed
| page).
|
| 4. The typewriter still wins here. Though, one could argue,
| that it takes less physical energy to transport and use a
| computer vs a typewriter.
|
| 5. A computer could be powered by solar energy today, with
| enough solar infrastructure behind it. I'm also thinking back
| to the OLPC that had a crank to charge its battery.
|
| 6. The typewriter still wins here, though I don't think the
| average typewriter user is doing their own restoration or major
| repairs.
|
| 7. Computers now win here, simply due to popularity.
|
| 8. This seems to go hand and hand with number 7. A few lucky
| people may have a local typewriter shop, but they are few and
| far between.
|
| 9. I don't think the computer inherently creates this
| disruption. I didn't notice a shift here until the internet
| really exploded in popularity. The computer has also attempted
| to solve the division it created, and has been used to keep
| families together. I'm thinking of times where I had to travel
| for work, and I'd get a FaceTime call to bring me into a
| birthday party happening thousands of miles away.
| xandrius wrote:
| Please explain where I can locally fix more than a few
| components of either my phone or laptop.
|
| For instance, the GPU of my gaming laptop died, what do I do
| to fix it from a local store?
| stodor89 wrote:
| Great article, thanks for sharing. I enjoyed hearing the author's
| viewpoint, and his list of criteria for buying stuff can be
| useful with some minor adjustments. Also, the replies regarding
| his wife were hilarious, if a bit nosy and presumptuous (or maybe
| because of that).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Berry has stuck to his guns:
|
| "Why Wendell Berry is still not going to buy a computer" (2019)
|
| <https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2019/0418/Why-Wendell-B...>
|
| (From an earlier HN discussion, thanks Jtsummers for linking:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43883115>.)
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i worked at a well known bookstore and the owner invited him to
| a reading, but he turned down with a hand written letter
| basically saying: "your bookstore seems nice but i never leave
| my farm and don't want to for a reading"
| gizajob wrote:
| Where do I buy a wife to do my typing and grammar checking?
| harvey9 wrote:
| You can buy one online. But you'll need a wife to do that for
| you of course.
| Jordan_Pelt wrote:
| "My wife types my work..."
|
| Those five words render the entire essay meaningless.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| I get your point, but good luck with that. Most (every?)
| influential figure had has something problematic about their
| person. If you can't see the good through the bad, then you
| will quickly find yourself with nothing.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Shocking that a wife might willingly want to help her husband
| with something important to him.
| Jordan_Pelt wrote:
| I'm sure she does, but that's beside the point. Why should we
| pay any attention to the opinions of a person on replacing
| something he doesn't use with something else he won't use. He
| may as well say that he won't buy a snowblower because his
| groundskeeper uses a shovel and does just fine.
| magneticnorth wrote:
| I think you'll appreciate the first response in the "Letters"
| section - the one that starts off with "Wendell Berry provides
| writers enslaved by the computer with a handy alternative: Wife
| - a low-tech energy-saving device."
|
| It got a chuckle out of me, for sure.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i been filling my head with computers
|
| knowledge i hope to delete
| erehweb wrote:
| Harper's (where the article was originally published) requires
| you to submit by snail-mail, but many places require email
| submissions. Guessing that computers won partly because they are
| a lot more convenient for publishers - if you're typing something
| up then the publisher has to type it again on their end.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| In a cruel twist of fate most people today neither own, nor use a
| computer, not in the sense used in the essay. They instead use
| their phones to do a very restricted sub-set of things they could
| do on a computer and in a very limited manner.
|
| I guess the forward-looking tech nerds of the '80s, the tip of
| the spear of the information revolution, must now be crying in
| their corn flakes with the irony of it all. Nowadays only nerds
| (really) use computers.
|
| P.S. Obviously I own computers. I have four laptops and a bunch
| of small-form clamshells left over from a period when I collected
| them semi-enthusiastically (including a Viliv, a Zaurus and a Ben
| Nanonote). I recently went on the market to see if there are any
| new ones around and ended up buying two, which I shall not
| advertise. I'm a victim of tech advertisement.
| qiine wrote:
| its impressive how persieved convenience trumps all when it
| comes to mass adoption
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| There exist lots of definitions of "convenience". I, for
| example, find it deeply inconvenient to be have a device with
| me that basically spies on me all the time.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Whem it comes to phones and social media apps, it's not people
| using computers but the other way around.
| demaga wrote:
| This sounds smart and could 100% be something I would say
| too, but it is not true at all. People benefit greatly from
| phones (and in some sense, social media). The way to test it
| is to give up phones for some time.
|
| I spent 3 months without smart phone, and it was inconvenient
| as hell. Not having maps, calculator, or wikipedia at all
| times sucks. So almost everyone I know definitely does use
| computers, in all meanings.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > This sounds smart and could 100% be something I would say
| too, but it is not true at all. People benefit greatly from
| phones (and in some sense, social media). The way to test
| it is to give up phones for some time.
|
| I know quite a lot of people who gave up their mobile phone
| for some time, and their experience was very positive. For
| all of the applications, you can find better alternatives.
| abe_m wrote:
| I think that was late enough that a lot of adults that were
| buying computers for home were buying them to run a particular
| application, not to get into the esoteric inner-workings of the
| computer. The type of people that essay were talking about
| wanted a computer to run a word processor that made text
| editing easier. Instead of having to rewrite your documents to
| move paragraphs around, you could instantly move them with cut
| and paste! Also built-in spell checker was pretty big in the
| era.
|
| As for the comparison to new phones, from the people I see
| using them, they are all doing stuff no home computer, or
| really any 80's computer could do. Live video chatting, remote
| text communication on the go, taking pictures, listening to
| music, watching videos, doom scrolling generic "content".
|
| In most ways, users are currently in the computing and
| communications golden age, far more so than the 80's.
| erehweb wrote:
| Your first sentence is false in US at least. Census says that
| 81% of households have a desktop or laptop
| https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/computer...
| karhuton wrote:
| After certain age, all school students up to university
| use/have a computer.
|
| If they end up in an office job, they very likely will
| have/keep one around.
|
| And even when not, people with higher education tend to like
| use the home computer for certain things. For example "official
| stuff" like doing taxes, using government services. Maybe throw
| in some more detailed trip planning, hobbies, spreadsheets...
| reilly3000 wrote:
| This article makes me consider how the medium of production
| affects the final content. There is a certain cost of writing a
| sentence on paper, typewriter, computer, and phone. The higher
| the cost of forming words, the more cognition it invites. The
| greater the cost of revision (especially with typewriters), the
| more likely one tends towards precision. It leads me towards a
| belief that better writing must start on paper.
|
| For my ADHD brain, handwriting is difficult. As I progress
| through an idea I can watch my handwriting degrade into
| illegibility and the marginalia increase markedly. Crafting a
| cogent essay isn't easy in any medium, but I seem to get along ok
| with a Doc these days. Perhaps there is something meaningful in
| the act of preparing a handwritten essay for broader publication
| that refines the work more critically than if it were ready to
| distribute instantly. At the risk of being too romantic it seems
| like handwriting may take on the quality of hand-thrown pottery,
| imbued with some spirit that is void in mass production.
|
| As I peck this comment out with my thumbs I wonder how that
| constraint impacts the words that reach you. Next time I'll write
| it on a legal pad first, but maybe you'll not hear from me in a
| while.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| Does this theory mean that phones invite more cognition when
| writing than laptops or desktop do? I can type significantly
| faster on a computer than on a phone, and revisions are easier
| too.
|
| I think this is just romanticizing the past.
| wjnc wrote:
| As a child of a scientist and teacher from the '40s and '50s I
| think there is some romanticism in your opinion. Can't argue
| with your personal situation, but I know for a fact that
| writing notes, copywriting, stenciling, multiplying and
| distributing were all tasks my parents were very happy to see
| replaced by technology during their careers. They were early
| adopters of digital typewriters, pc's, word processors and the
| internet and otherwise very much not technically inclined.
| Those were mostly chores. (I agree with your point, as an
| economist ;), that the average value of a word is higher when
| the cost are higher.) The one thing my mom did teach me very
| early was a zettelkasten-like system. Never appreciated that
| trial (unsuccessful, alas) enough until I read about
| zettelkasten.
| waynenilsen wrote:
| Also potentially interesting thoughts along a similar line
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Writing with pencil on paper is very very slow and takes much
| more space per letter. If you write a lot, chances are high of
| developing RSI. I'm not even thinking about editing.
|
| I don't see how the author advocates 'the tool should be better
| than the one it replaces' and then chooses not to buy a computer.
| I got my Atari ST around '87 and i loved it.
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