3 ms·

People who build 3d printers don't design the microcontroller used to actually drive te thing. It's magic with a DIY layer on top. Right to repair may help in k

by bzzzt 5y ago

People who build 3d printers don't design the microcontroller used to actually drive te thing. It's magic with a DIY layer on top. Right to repair may help in keep costs and waste down by making swapping highly integrated parts easier, but I don't think Louis Rossmann or any other human on earth has a complete grasp of the entire iOS codebase. That's still a long way from the build your own radio kits of the 1950's where it was possible to understand what each component did. (and even then, how to make components was already impossible because you did not have the tools to do so)

userbinator 5y ago
and even then, how to make components was already impossible because you did not have the tools to do so Passive components are still (relatively) easy to make --- hand-winding inductors is still common in amateur radio, for example; and even diodes are possible (crystal radio), but transistors and other semiconductors are definitely beyond the average hobbyist. (If you have glassworking skills, vacuum tubes are just barely doable --- that's how they were invented, after all.)
toomanybeersies 5y ago
No human has ever been able to understand and build all the tools that they use. Steel was to the neolithic man what silicon is to the modern man. Throughout history, science has been more about trying to understand the mechanisms of how we utilise nature than genuinely novel ideas like relativity. The problem is the deliberate secrecy of knowledge; holding information to oneself in order to gain an advantage over others. You don't need to understand gravity to benefit from the gravity. Likewise, the average person doesn't need to understand integrated circuits, atomic physics, or any other high technology. The harm comes from those who hold information to themselves in order to exploit others.
rektide 5y ago
> People who build 3d printers don't design the microcontroller used to actually drive the thing. On the upside, hopefully soon-ish they well. Open chip design has become a very quick moving area lately. We're starting to see more fabs open up to having chips made. But the makers probably won't be building the chip fabs to make those chips. > It's magic with a DIY layer on top. It'd be lovely to see some folks try to DIY a fab. How hard do you think it would be to go build a 1µm chip fab yourself (what the 486 launched on)? The fab is hard (probably! not sure!), but we're getting pretty good at spreading the knowledge of how to design chips. Your point is well taken that we can't know everything. I like the above quote, "magic with a DIY layer on top". In the 3d printing scenario, I think we're closer to full-knowledge than we might originally credit. With something more complex like an OS, I'd rate it down to more a question of knowability: no one may know Linux entirely or even let's say (a much vaster) Freedesktop stack, but there's a couple thousand people on the planet (maybe decreasing, ffffff) that, if they had some reason to figure something out, could go & dive in & understand all the relevant subsystems to the challenge at hand reasonably well within a day. Computing drags in so so so many things, there is so much going on, just mountains of code... but our tools to navigate & observe & experiment & view are highly highly refined, are very very good. Computing is imminently knowable, everywhere (except when institutionally designed not to be). Personally I really think the web as a medium is probably one of the best ways to introduce people to information technology, to bestow agency & learn about systems. There is a consistent, malleable, programmatic (inter-)system, focused on media delivery (immediate results) with well defined rules. But I wrestle with this difficulty you present: even with the best DevTools (quite likely one of the greatest understanding/learning-machines on the planet), under the surface lies of it all is an incredibly complex browser, constituting a vast magical system. One can be a complete expert at web development, but few of those experts are browser experts. Usually there's no call to go below the abstraction boundary, to understand the magic. But it is a barrier. The web is by far my most preferred rich environment, the most hands-on, practical, tactile thing I could imagine putting before a new IT recruit, but it's with faith not reason that I would justify putting them to such a highly abstract machine first. And, alas, there aren't even that many browsers left to compare across- not that most were open source or viewable anyhow, not until very recently.

by bzzzt 5y ago

userbinator 5y ago

and even then, how to make components was already impossible because you did not have the tools to do so Passive components are still (relatively) easy to make --- hand-winding inductors is still common in amateur radio, for example; and even diodes are possible (crystal radio), but transistors and other semiconductors are definitely beyond the average hobbyist. (If you have glassworking skills, vacuum tubes are just barely doable --- that's how they were invented, after all.)

toomanybeersies 5y ago

No human has ever been able to understand and build all the tools that they use. Steel was to the neolithic man what silicon is to the modern man. Throughout history, science has been more about trying to understand the mechanisms of how we utilise nature than genuinely novel ideas like relativity. The problem is the deliberate secrecy of knowledge; holding information to oneself in order to gain an advantage over others. You don't need to understand gravity to benefit from the gravity. Likewise, the average person doesn't need to understand integrated circuits, atomic physics, or any other high technology. The harm comes from those who hold information to themselves in order to exploit others.

rektide 5y ago

> People who build 3d printers don't design the microcontroller used to actually drive the thing. On the upside, hopefully soon-ish they well. Open chip design has become a very quick moving area lately. We're starting to see more fabs open up to having chips made. But the makers probably won't be building the chip fabs to make those chips. > It's magic with a DIY layer on top. It'd be lovely to see some folks try to DIY a fab. How hard do you think it would be to go build a 1µm chip fab yourself (what the 486 launched on)? The fab is hard (probably! not sure!), but we're getting pretty good at spreading the knowledge of how to design chips. Your point is well taken that we can't know everything. I like the above quote, "magic with a DIY layer on top". In the 3d printing scenario, I think we're closer to full-knowledge than we might originally credit. With something more complex like an OS, I'd rate it down to more a question of knowability: no one may know Linux entirely or even let's say (a much vaster) Freedesktop stack, but there's a couple thousand people on the planet (maybe decreasing, ffffff) that, if they had some reason to figure something out, could go & dive in & understand all the relevant subsystems to the challenge at hand reasonably well within a day. Computing drags in so so so many things, there is so much going on, just mountains of code... but our tools to navigate & observe & experiment & view are highly highly refined, are very very good. Computing is imminently knowable, everywhere (except when institutionally designed not to be). Personally I really think the web as a medium is probably one of the best ways to introduce people to information technology, to bestow agency & learn about systems. There is a consistent, malleable, programmatic (inter-)system, focused on media delivery (immediate results) with well defined rules. But I wrestle with this difficulty you present: even with the best DevTools (quite likely one of the greatest understanding/learning-machines on the planet), under the surface lies of it all is an incredibly complex browser, constituting a vast magical system. One can be a complete expert at web development, but few of those experts are browser experts. Usually there's no call to go below the abstraction boundary, to understand the magic. But it is a barrier. The web is by far my most preferred rich environment, the most hands-on, practical, tactile thing I could imagine putting before a new IT recruit, but it's with faith not reason that I would justify putting them to such a highly abstract machine first. And, alas, there aren't even that many browsers left to compare across- not that most were open source or viewable anyhow, not until very recently.