April 25, 2008 at 12:07 Will IT people rule the world?
Once my mouse glitched. A funny electronic animal began to behave as if drunk: the cursor on the screen responded sluggishly, slowly and out of place, as if I was trying to stir the hardening concrete with a plastic tube for juice.
This happens, I know, but the nature of this glitch is nevertheless incomprehensible to me. A few sharp mouse movements did not help - I almost pulled her tail out of the USB port, but the cursor continued to be cotton.
Not knowing what else to do, I pulled the wire out of the connector and reinserted it. Did not help. Then I took it out again, turned the mouse over, blew it into the hole of the optical eye and even erased the dust adhering to its short plastic legs. Then I inserted the wire back into the USB - and it worked. Even a little better than it was - the mouse began to run just like new, only after purchase.
A friend commented on my actions on ICQ with the words about “rested and fresh drivers” and “maybe the whole thing is dusting”. Maybe so - I know little about mice. Maybe my actions were right - but the idea to do just that, and not otherwise, was purely intuitive. Intuition is a great thing, but it is based on the repetition of the past and the basic understanding of the world. The basic attitude is mechanistic: in this case, I did what a watchmaker would do with broken gears - I would take the mechanism out of the case and clean it from dust to begin with. The practices of the first doctors were also mechanistic: if a person is sick, it means that there is some kind of infection in him that can be cleaned mechanically, for example, by bloodletting.
In fact, this is a standard approach to any problem: disassemble, clean from excess, assemble. If it doesn’t help, we study the question in more detail or call a specialist. A specialist is such a person who has already spent his time studying the problem. However, it is not eternal, like all of us. And what happens if a specialist is not around? That's right, everything will be something like in the case of a buggy mouse: a few basic actions prompted by intuition - and well, if it helped. And if not? There are two ways out: to study the problem and become a specialist, or to reconcile and buy a new mouse, for example. Or use the touchpad.
It so often happens in the world - artifacts are experiencing trends. Here we once had tube electronics, but then everyone switched to transistors - and tube receivers or televisions remained in many houses after that for decades. Moreover, the unit is there, but there are no specialists - everyone has long been relearned to solder microcircuits. So we have to solve the problems with sound / image as instinct tells us - with a fist on the body. And what exactly is happening there, that the picture is stabilizing and the sound appears - no one can explain. That is, the causal relationship in the head settles down, and its nature remains, however, unclear. Favorable ground for mysticism.
Isaac Asimov in my favorite book, Founders, has a story about a caste of techies living on the fragments of the once powerful Empire. This empire was created for centuries and was also built there for centuries: nuclear reactors that gave heat and light to its planets illuminated them and heated them even when there was only a radio echo left from the state itself.
The technicians of this empire who created the reactors left detailed instructions for their operation, describing possible problems and actions.to help eliminate them. With the decline of the empire, technical education disappeared, nuclear physics was forgotten. Atomic energy with the disappearance of specialists in it has turned into an unrenewable resource. But light and warmth were also needed by the inhabitants of lonely planets lost in the vastness of the galaxy - and the imperial nuclear power plants became the most important value, and the descendants of the imperial techies who kept knowledge of their operation - the elite. To maintain power, they had to carefully preserve their secrets, and the process of extracting light from the energy of the nucleus of an atom had to be shrouded in mystical mystery and supplemented with rituals for greater importance. They became priests of the new cult, the instructions of their ancestors - their bible, and their work - ministry.
Azimov described the maximized relations of the layman and technology, following how their principles and patterns will unfold in certain circumstances.
Does this threaten us? It may seem so. We laugh at quotes from the bashorg describing the cretinism of the lamers - or rather, at how stupid we look in the eyes of IT people.
IT people are such funny people who, in childhood and adolescence, were not interested in football, fights, drunkards and girls, but indulged in codes and algorithms. From the outside it looked strange, was perceived almost by eccentricity. But IT people grew up and seemed to have decided to recoup on other people for their difficult childhood, calling them lamers and developing a manner of answering rarely, incomprehensibly and with all appearance to show who was in charge. The self-proclaimed elite of our time, somewhat reminiscent of the "elite" of the stagnant USSR - people involved in the distribution of scarce goods.
However, in different situations, we ourselves are lamers, and there are still more people whom the bash readers laugh at than there are funny IT people. And in those forms that are described by Asimov, the kingdom of IT-specialists is definitely not coming. Firstly, the realm of absurdity never lasts long - human nature itself resists the establishment of extremes, like a pendulum striving to restore balance - the lamer becomes wiser and learns to resist the IT specialist. In the same case, with Bashorg, we observe a tangible humanitarianization of him - this is more a set of anecdotes from life than a smoking-room of specialists.
Secondly, the chances that the works of modern technicians outlive themselves are negligible. The cult of consumption along with the cheapening of electronics makes the service life of the equipment relatively short - then it either breaks or is thrown away. The tasks “so that grandchildren use it” are not for manufacturers of mobile phones, refrigerators, cars and laptops. Of course, the same nuclear power plants remain - but they are still controlled by the same incorrect electronics. So, even if another historical cataclysm immerses humanity in the darkness of the dark ages, our descendants are not threatened with slavery by engineers. True, there is no need to enjoy free light either.
This happens, I know, but the nature of this glitch is nevertheless incomprehensible to me. A few sharp mouse movements did not help - I almost pulled her tail out of the USB port, but the cursor continued to be cotton.
Not knowing what else to do, I pulled the wire out of the connector and reinserted it. Did not help. Then I took it out again, turned the mouse over, blew it into the hole of the optical eye and even erased the dust adhering to its short plastic legs. Then I inserted the wire back into the USB - and it worked. Even a little better than it was - the mouse began to run just like new, only after purchase.
A friend commented on my actions on ICQ with the words about “rested and fresh drivers” and “maybe the whole thing is dusting”. Maybe so - I know little about mice. Maybe my actions were right - but the idea to do just that, and not otherwise, was purely intuitive. Intuition is a great thing, but it is based on the repetition of the past and the basic understanding of the world. The basic attitude is mechanistic: in this case, I did what a watchmaker would do with broken gears - I would take the mechanism out of the case and clean it from dust to begin with. The practices of the first doctors were also mechanistic: if a person is sick, it means that there is some kind of infection in him that can be cleaned mechanically, for example, by bloodletting.
In fact, this is a standard approach to any problem: disassemble, clean from excess, assemble. If it doesn’t help, we study the question in more detail or call a specialist. A specialist is such a person who has already spent his time studying the problem. However, it is not eternal, like all of us. And what happens if a specialist is not around? That's right, everything will be something like in the case of a buggy mouse: a few basic actions prompted by intuition - and well, if it helped. And if not? There are two ways out: to study the problem and become a specialist, or to reconcile and buy a new mouse, for example. Or use the touchpad.
It so often happens in the world - artifacts are experiencing trends. Here we once had tube electronics, but then everyone switched to transistors - and tube receivers or televisions remained in many houses after that for decades. Moreover, the unit is there, but there are no specialists - everyone has long been relearned to solder microcircuits. So we have to solve the problems with sound / image as instinct tells us - with a fist on the body. And what exactly is happening there, that the picture is stabilizing and the sound appears - no one can explain. That is, the causal relationship in the head settles down, and its nature remains, however, unclear. Favorable ground for mysticism.
Isaac Asimov in my favorite book, Founders, has a story about a caste of techies living on the fragments of the once powerful Empire. This empire was created for centuries and was also built there for centuries: nuclear reactors that gave heat and light to its planets illuminated them and heated them even when there was only a radio echo left from the state itself.
The technicians of this empire who created the reactors left detailed instructions for their operation, describing possible problems and actions.to help eliminate them. With the decline of the empire, technical education disappeared, nuclear physics was forgotten. Atomic energy with the disappearance of specialists in it has turned into an unrenewable resource. But light and warmth were also needed by the inhabitants of lonely planets lost in the vastness of the galaxy - and the imperial nuclear power plants became the most important value, and the descendants of the imperial techies who kept knowledge of their operation - the elite. To maintain power, they had to carefully preserve their secrets, and the process of extracting light from the energy of the nucleus of an atom had to be shrouded in mystical mystery and supplemented with rituals for greater importance. They became priests of the new cult, the instructions of their ancestors - their bible, and their work - ministry.
Azimov described the maximized relations of the layman and technology, following how their principles and patterns will unfold in certain circumstances.
Does this threaten us? It may seem so. We laugh at quotes from the bashorg describing the cretinism of the lamers - or rather, at how stupid we look in the eyes of IT people.
IT people are such funny people who, in childhood and adolescence, were not interested in football, fights, drunkards and girls, but indulged in codes and algorithms. From the outside it looked strange, was perceived almost by eccentricity. But IT people grew up and seemed to have decided to recoup on other people for their difficult childhood, calling them lamers and developing a manner of answering rarely, incomprehensibly and with all appearance to show who was in charge. The self-proclaimed elite of our time, somewhat reminiscent of the "elite" of the stagnant USSR - people involved in the distribution of scarce goods.
However, in different situations, we ourselves are lamers, and there are still more people whom the bash readers laugh at than there are funny IT people. And in those forms that are described by Asimov, the kingdom of IT-specialists is definitely not coming. Firstly, the realm of absurdity never lasts long - human nature itself resists the establishment of extremes, like a pendulum striving to restore balance - the lamer becomes wiser and learns to resist the IT specialist. In the same case, with Bashorg, we observe a tangible humanitarianization of him - this is more a set of anecdotes from life than a smoking-room of specialists.
Secondly, the chances that the works of modern technicians outlive themselves are negligible. The cult of consumption along with the cheapening of electronics makes the service life of the equipment relatively short - then it either breaks or is thrown away. The tasks “so that grandchildren use it” are not for manufacturers of mobile phones, refrigerators, cars and laptops. Of course, the same nuclear power plants remain - but they are still controlled by the same incorrect electronics. So, even if another historical cataclysm immerses humanity in the darkness of the dark ages, our descendants are not threatened with slavery by engineers. True, there is no need to enjoy free light either.