4 ms·

I feel like this analysis do not take into account the true magnitude of computing in respect to language. Long ago we invented writing, so a literal tradition

by bsedlm 5y ago

I feel like this analysis do not take into account the true magnitude of computing in respect to language. Long ago we invented writing, so a literal tradition (as opposed to an oral tradition) was possible. But the transition took thousands of years. The transition from the law being what a monarch speaks (the scribes may use writing but what is written is only the law because of who spoke it) to a state governed not by some monarch's speech but by a written document. Walter J. Ong made a career studying the impact of technology on language and culture. Thus, IMHO computing is an evolution of language on the same league as the transition from oral cultures to literal cultures. It's reasonable to expect this transformation to take hundreds of years (at least). And so this analysis is incomplete; it does not take into account the magnitude of this transition.

ajuc 5y ago
> The transition from the law being what a monarch speaks (the scribes may use writing but what is written is only the law because of who spoke it) to a state governed not by some monarch's speech but by a written document. I don't think this is related. There were illiterate communities where law was communal not autocratic and the leaders were elected. In fact autocracy often came to these places bundled with writing system and one flavor of christianity or another.
Ericson2314 5y ago
Yes, "computers that do the stuff", and "communication method that can be verified up to self-consistency" are best not conflated. I like thinking about https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/ https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-te... and https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/ https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/ Historically, desk jobs meant producing and computing streams of documents, and the integration was mostly informal, in our heads. Now, we can collaborate directly rather than shitting out the derivative of what we actually want. This is a huge new capability to enable way better collaboration. We've seen in programming, but seeing it in an existing discipline like (pure) math would better demonstrate it's ability to supercede existing methods rather than just live along side them as the weird new thing. From pure math, I hope it hits applied math and the sciences next, bridging the shitty-python--LaTeX--thinking divide and getting us more reproducible and trustworthy experimental analysis. Many cool things after that.

by bsedlm 5y ago

ajuc 5y ago

> The transition from the law being what a monarch speaks (the scribes may use writing but what is written is only the law because of who spoke it) to a state governed not by some monarch's speech but by a written document. I don't think this is related. There were illiterate communities where law was communal not autocratic and the leaders were elected. In fact autocracy often came to these places bundled with writing system and one flavor of christianity or another.

Ericson2314 5y ago

Yes, "computers that do the stuff", and "communication method that can be verified up to self-consistency" are best not conflated. I like thinking about https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/ https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-te... and https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/ https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/ Historically, desk jobs meant producing and computing streams of documents, and the integration was mostly informal, in our heads. Now, we can collaborate directly rather than shitting out the derivative of what we actually want. This is a huge new capability to enable way better collaboration. We've seen in programming, but seeing it in an existing discipline like (pure) math would better demonstrate it's ability to supercede existing methods rather than just live along side them as the weird new thing. From pure math, I hope it hits applied math and the sciences next, bridging the shitty-python--LaTeX--thinking divide and getting us more reproducible and trustworthy experimental analysis. Many cool things after that.