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There's a pretty significant difference in kind between design constraints and political or economic constraints. The "freedom" to mistype a URL and then get ph
by mechanical_fish 15y ago
There's a pretty significant difference in kind between design constraints and political or economic constraints. The "freedom" to mistype a URL and then get phished, or to misconfigure a backup drive and then lose all of your data, or to save a file inside an arbitrary folder with an arbitrary name on an arbitrary drive and then be unable to find it again, is very different from the freedoms of the Enlightenment.
Computer owners who don't understand their computers do not feel free. They feel a constant sense of discomfort, even dread. They fear making mistakes, they worry that the box will break at any moment, and they're embarrassed that they have to ask techies -- often expensive techies -- for help.
- pyre 15y agoThere are equally as many people that run rough shod over everything because they'll just ask their techie friend/family member to fix whatever broke for them. Whether one falls into this camp, or the camp that you're talking about is probably just up to personality types.
- zackattack 15y agoInappropriately applied dichotomy, my brotha. "Figure it out yourself and lead" vs. "Manipulate someone else into doing it for me" ---- a lot of people would rather do it themselves if it were easy enough.
- pyre 15y agoMaybe, but I was talking about the fear of screwing up that the parent was talking about. Some people have no fear of screwing up, even when doing things that probably should make them at least cautious, because they have the view that someone else will fix it for them.