"Because it costs money, they will only allow that which has quality content. "
Two words: National Enquirer.
In fact the sole metric for printed publication has nothing whatsoever to do with “quality content”. It’s “The cost of printing this will be $x. Will I be able to sell it for $y, where y x?”
Incidentally, in “Silicon Snake Oil” the author explicitly stated that information was more useful and valuable in printed form than on a computer screen. Information wasn’t “real” on a computer. I watched him jabber this nonsense on C-SPAN2 and get his butt handed to him.
How about the massive number of software programmers and designers whom are totally against voting machines? They know what happens when a computer goes wrong, and I suspect they know (but aren’t saying) that they have no trust that the industry could produce the level of competence required at the prices we are willing to pay.
Steve, tell me about it. I miss the days before the frenetic camera shot.
One of my favorite quotes about computers is from Dijkstra: “Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” For a long time I didn’t really understand that quote, but now I realize that as a computer scientist, it isn’t the computer that I study. The computer is merely a tool - an indispensible one, but still just a tool. My real passion is information and knowledge. Toxonomy, the semantic web, artificial intelligence, the Internet, Wikipedia, information asymmetries… This is incredibly exciting stuff to ponder!
People might not realize it, but we are in the middle of the Information Revolution - which is changing the world as much or more than the Industrial Revolution before it.
If you ever get the chance to see Cliff Stoll speak in person - do it. I got to attend one of his presentations back in the Cuckoo’s Nest days, and he’s a great speaker. Very entertaining as well as very incisive.
“The thought of expelling sickness is itself sickness. Sickness will be expelled by abandoning yourself to it, and carrying on within its midst.” -The Life-Giving Sword
I would claim to have been a programmer for some time now, but I don’t think of technology for its own sake, perhaps because I know that I have the ability to, as you suggest, ‘unplug’ at any given moment and walk away from it all. I think that it’s quite possible to work with passion and still know that nothing about the technology that we work on will change the world. It will always come down to those human factors that you’re so prone to write about. And so it seems a little easier to let myself go and drop into the maelstrom of whatever the acronym of the month is, try to fully catch the zen of it, and know that the thing that emerges on the other side will not be technology, but myself. As someone said recently, “…how only lasts about 5 years, but why is forever.”
Now who could that have been… 
Great Post Jeff
I definately echo the 40-something sentiment. I’m much more cautious than I was 10 years ago in terms of adopting new technology. Its fun to read about and see whats happening, but I no longer feel the need to “get it now!”
In a field where the “hot new item” changes each year, its easy to watch people get quickly led down the path of chasing the latest fad … anyone heard of iPhone - thats so yesterdays news now.
I’ve also read Stoll’s books - they were excellant (and a great for cookie recipe I seem to remember). I think the point of the quality of information is key. We seem to have many sources of information today … 175,000+ new blogs still being created each day. Yet the trick is find good, authoritative sources.
Yeah I just recently read an article called “Don’t let technology take over” about this and commented on my blog about it (http://harmons.blogspot.com/2007/06/is-technology-taking-over-our-lives.html)
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I’m probably about as far back as it goes in adopting new technology for my personal use - but like to at least keep knowledgeable about the up-and-coming even though i usually don’t use it for awhile.
It’s interesting that in software development, there’s actually a pretty strong market (it’s not the entire market obviously but they have their share) in NOT going with the latest technology - like those that are AS400 programmers or COBOL programmers, etc. I’m not in this field - but I guess there’s comfort in knowing that if you want it, you can have the same for quite some time.
Regarding the minimal barriers to publishing on the internet vs. printing on paper, and any implications to quality of content, I think it’s important to remember that Stoll’s comments are from the era of hampsterdance. Much of the content on the internet was questionable. There’s surely more content of questionable value on the internet today than 11 years ago, but it’s easier to find the higher quality stuff. Search technology, for one, worked differently. Altavista was good at raking bits out of the muck, but not at separating/ranking what was useful vs. what wasn’t (maybe google is better…)
All in all, I’d have to say that at the time of his comments (mid-90’s) I’d have to agree that the internet was a valuable but not always trustworthy resource. There was also a lot less content that would truly replace good printed technical sources. Today - of course - I don’t think twice about googling for answers, solutions, etc.
Another great article.
I check Coding Horror every day, but despite using different browsers, clearing my cache and general techie wizardry I seem to get days in clumps.
I got July 3rd and July 2nd today (6th), but on checking the site on the 2nd and 3rd I didn’t have any new articles.
Am I missing something here?
Is there some sort of rip in the US/UK boundary?
I’ve been programming for almost a decade and I still haven’t mastered compilers or programming languages, a fascinating frontier for me.
I could see how you’d get burned out on a C#/IIS/SQL Server/ASP.Net-only diet, though.
Learn Haskell or Lisp or Erlang or something, mang.
Amen! You just read my mind.
Much of the content on the internet was questionable. There’s surely more content of questionable value on the internet today than 11 years ago, but it’s easier to find the higher quality stuff. Search technology, for one, worked differently
I would say that the #1 thing Cliff Stoll didn’t see coming was Google and PageRank. To be fair, I don’t think anyone did.
Since 99.99% of everything on the internet is crap (and that might be an optimistic figure), and the volume of content on the internet keeps growing exponentially, having a tool that can point you to that .01% is absolutely critical.
A god example of technology getting in the way…
Few months ago, when I was at a live rock concert I noticed most people were recording the show with their digital cameras, all the time. There were even people with a digital camera one hand and with a cell phone other hand (sending pictures to friends).
Yeah! It is great to be in a live show and watch it through a mini LCD screen!
I think that for a lot of people it is more important to tell and prove you were there than just enjoy the damn (and expensive) show.
As a professional programmer for twenty years you get a bit cynical about ‘the next great thing’: http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/04/20/programming-in-flares/ .
Unfortunately it isn’t easy to escape your email when you are a one man software company. Customer want answers to questions and they want them now!
Great post. I turn 40 next year and I’ve noticed that I’ve been looking backward in history for inspiration instead of forward like I did in the 80’s. Technology overload, I suppose. The simplicity of 80’s tech had an appeal that’s lost today…just plug in the Atari 800XL to a TV and you’re good to go. BASIC was a snap to learn. $6.95/hr CompuServe at 300-baud, though…bleccch!
We’ve sure seen quite a tech evolution in our lifetimes, haven’t we?
re. iSmell, a href="http://www.nataliedee.com/070107/its-all-cool-until-you-get-to-the-sauerkraut-track.jpg"It’s all good until you get to the sauerkraut track./a
One of the best things my parents did in raising me was to refuse to answer the phone during dinner time. This was before answering machines, and before telemarketers were prevalent.
I can kind of relate to what you’re talking about here. I do like computers for their own sake, but at the same time I really like it when I see them help people. That’s what really matters to me.
I’m in my late 30s, and last year I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that while I had managed to derive enjoyment out of what I had been doing, I didn’t enjoy it fully. There was always something missing. I remembered really liking programming when I was in public school, and in college. I had a few years of enjoyment out in the work world, where I got to “geek out” and try some things, but then it began to fade from there. Over time I realized that there are some deep flaws in our industry. There’s a disconnect between what computers can do and how people looking in from the outside understand them. This often leads to a bit of a mess (I’m being polite), and there follows a struggle with inefficient technology that just leads to frustration and angst. It also leads to computers not being used to their full potential. I don’t mean CPU cycles or memory being wasted. I’m talking about the fact that expectations of the benefit that can be derived from them just isn’t that high.
This finally came to head for me last year. On the one hand I love the vision of what computers can be in our society, and on the other it’s kind of depressing that most people don’t see it, and don’t expect to. I’ve found that I really like hanging out with the people who hold a higher vision of what computing is and can be. It’s really changed my perspective. That’s the career part.
I agree that every once in a while it’s nice to get away from it all as well, and get out in nature–to get out of my head, and more in touch with my heart.
As for Cliff Stoll, I wish I heard more from him. I used to see him on C-SPAN and on MSNBC occasionally, back 10 years ago when it was actually an interesting channel to watch. I remember his rants against computers in schools. He said they were coming at the expense of the creative arts, an important part of education. He also complained about how they were being used with kids, that their methods for using them were stifling creativity, and creating a rigidity in the students. I can sympathize with that view, though I don’t agree that computers don’t belong in schools. I think if there’s a problem, it’s with the teachers and administrators who don’t understand how to truly use them well (and I’m not talking about basic literacy). The computer is just a tool. It’s all in how its used. It really comes down to people’s understanding of what they’re good for.
Thought-provoking post and comments. I only had computer experience on the job briefly in the mid 1980s and since 1995, until I got my first personal computer about 7 months ago. Wow.
Stoll’s commentary about tvs and freeways and computers is salient today. It leads directly to questions about science itself and how or whether people view it as a tool or as an end in itself. Those are indeed unpopular questions.
At this point there are still many workers in many fields who have earned or retained some degree of prominence, even in “empirical” disciplines, without any critical support from computers. This phase of scientific knowledge may be passing us as we speak. The study of anything requires exposure to the object studied, and it should be a greater, better understanding of these objects or phenomena that is the goal of science and technology rather than an (over)emphasis on data manipulation and methodology itself. If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, then a walk in the forest (with keenly trained senses) is worth a thousand datasets from the many applicable disciplines.
It is tragic that there are students in biology who only know their organisms by their gene sequence profiles. Why are so many students more attracted by theoretical approaches that require elaborate, computer-aided algorithms than they are by studying the frogs or birds themselves in the field? The amount of field work to be done just to have a respectable grasp of what is happening in vulcanology, oceanography, ichthyology, etc., would keep thousands of scientists busy for millennia. In these cases computers are certainly an important resource, but are secondary to direct observations in nature. Today we seem to be training young minds to look to the computer first as a representation of knowledge instead of looking around in the world outside.
