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When I graduated from an ultra-liberal California university in the mid-70s, computing technology was consistently reviled as soulless, cold, and dangerous. It
by grellas 17y ago
When I graduated from an ultra-liberal California university in the mid-70s, computing technology was consistently reviled as soulless, cold, and dangerous.
It is interesting to have watched this attitude transmute over the years into a belief, typified in this piece, that such technology will so revolutionize the world as to work some great deliverance in the human condition.
Back in the day, those who criticized the "Machine" would glorify the artisans and revel in the idea of human creativity in its pure form (unaided by advanced tools of any kind). The attitude was almost anti-science and was in any event highly "humanistic."
Now creativity and technology appear to be closely coupled in the eyes of young people in academic settings, to the point where information technology, at least, is seen as having almost redemptive qualities.
Not saying any of this is profound - just wondering if others have observed this changed perception as well or have thoughts on how it might have come about. Is it because technology became "personal" as opposed to "corporate"?
By the way, don't play Fritz as a chess adversary - it is like playing a demon from hell!
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoNot only that, but people's relationships with each other have been changed by machines. It used to be that the FBI keeping a file open on somebody famous was considered scandal-worthy. Now FaceBook keeps much more personal information on all of us and people don't bat an eye about it. Younger people today seem to have completely abandoned the idea that they might have a private life and that privacy might have great value to themselves and others. The noble savage and artisan view of humanity has changed into a view that we're all mostly just interchangeable nodes on the world network. We have become the very machines that we once so hated.
- tokenadult 17y agoIt used to be that the FBI keeping a file open on somebody famous was considered scandal-worthy. Now FaceBook keeps much more personal information on all of us and people don't bat an eye about it. That's a really good observation. People who are below a certain age don't have much perspective on a) how mundane most information in FBI files always has been, and b) how much more pervasively personal information about most people is now shared by computerized networks than it was shared by small town gossip.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoIs it not that in (a) the FBI have the file that is the issue. Just as now we'd be concerned if the FBI was keeping particularly close tabs on our FB details (I mean closer than the standard trawl-net approach).