gdritter repos when-computer / f9889b1
Updated intro text Getty Ritter 9 years ago
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11 \meta{ ( "intro" "an introduction" ("meta") ) }
2 There are three reasons I'm starting a separate blog.
2 There are three reasons I'm starting this blog.
33
4 Number one: I want to force myself to write on a regular
5 basis, mostly regardless of content. It's striking to me that I am
6 very used to \em{writing}—I probably write a novel's worth on various
4 Number one: I want to force myself to write in a concerted, focused
5 way, even on smaller or irrelevant topics. It's striking to me that I am
6 very used to writing in the abstract—I probably write a novel's worth on various
77 chat services every week or so—but when I start to do long-form
8 writing, I tend to waffle and get bogged down in little details
8 writing, I tend to overthink things, get bogged down in details,
99 and then give up.\ref{blog}
1010 \sidenote
1111 {
1515 me feel less excited about writing new things there.
1616 }
1717 So \em{reason one} for this blog is that it's a
18 place for me to \em{practice} writing.
18 place for me to \em{practice} writing without feeling like it has
19 to be, well, \em{good}.
1920
20 Number two: I like to collect weird knowledge, and I like sharing
21 that knowledge: weird theories, strange inventions,
22 niche interests, and so forth. I'm a programming language nerd,
23 and I love off-kilter programming languages. I'm also a
24 natural language nerd, and I love learning about various
25 existing languages and their interesting features. I love history,
26 and cultures and food and all kinds of things. So, \em{reason two} for
27 this blog is that I can try to take all this miscellanea and put
28 it in one place, to have a repository of all of it.
21 Number two: I'm a collector of the weird. I like reading about
22 disproven, disused, or even just forgotten theories, and odd,
23 off-kilter pieces of art or science or literature, and unusual
24 social movements, and everything that could be categorized as
25 esoterica. I have a set of favorite etymologies and a set of
26 favorite conspiracy theories and a set of favorite esoteric
27 programming languages, and I've done reading about
28 a whole slew of odd topics, but especially food and language
29 and notations and just plain weirdness. So \em{reason two} for
30 this blog is that I can try to take all this miscellanea and
31 throw it into a place that's not just my head.
2932
3033 Number three: I'll probably write a lot about computers—I am,
3134 after all, a computer scientist—and in part, it's because I've
3235 started to notice something unusual about my own relationship
3336 with computers. In contrast to many programmers I talk to,
34 \em{I'm still excited about computers}. I
35 remember that joy and excitement I felt like when I first started
36 learning to program, or when I first learned interesting new
37 languages or found interesting new algorithms. And sometimes
38 \em{I still feel that}. On the other hand, many of the programmers
39 and computer scientists that I talk to regularly seem to have an
40 attitude of resignation and sadness about computers. This isn't
41 entirely unexpected: the field has a staggeringly large number
42 of problems, both in technical areas and in cultural areas, and
43 it's easy to get sad about the state of computers today.
37 \em{I'm still excited about computers}. There's a particular
38 kind of joy and excitement you get when you first learn how to
39 program, when you first explore a fascinating algorithm or
40 learn a different kind of language and start making things
41 happen on your screen. It feels like magic.
42
43 I think for a
44 lot of people, that feeling tends to fade over time, once you
45 look into the guts of the machine and you notice all the
46 cut corners and awkward edges that exist in our modern computering
47 environments,
48 to say nothing of the even worse state of the culture and
49 social structures that surround computers. We have amazing
50 underlying ideas that we've obscured with layers of cruft
51 and a thick forest of hacks, argued over with fervor by
52 cliques of short-sighted super-specialists who don't know what
53 history their craft has (to say nothing of the insights
54 they'd gain from it), all deployed in the service of widespread
55 surveillance both public and private, or at least in the service
56 of blandly Objectivist reimaginings of existing service companies
57 with a thin veneer of web-view disguising the same old greedy
58 hucksters selling the same old snake oil. It's not hard to get
59 disillusioned.
4460
4561 Certainly, it's important to be aware of those problems—but
4662 I also think that if we're ever going to iron out those problems,
4763 we need to be motivated by excitement and not resignation or
48 anger. So \em{reason three} for this blog is that I can try,
64 anger. We need to recapture and relive that excitement, so we
65 can build a new world motivated not by greed and exclusion but
66 by joy and wonder.
67 So \em{reason three} for this blog is that I can try,
4968 in whatever little way, to share a little bit of my excitement
5069 for the future of computers.