Linux in Harpers...
[ I hope no one minds me posting this here, but I figured many would
be interested... ]
For those who might not ordinarily see it, there are a couple of
articles in Harper's this month with relevance to Linux. For those
who don't know Harper's is *not* a technology magazine. It's a fairly
well-respected literary magazine, a moderately big deal.
The first article is a long essay specifically about Linux. It
discusses the dangers of the the current commercial OS "code wizard"
trend of handing over all the details to a program that'll just DTRT
and write your source for you, because you can't be bothered, because
the company knows best anyway, and becaus you shouldn't *want* to be
bothered.
It focuses on the effects on human knowledge and, to some extent the
effects on human civilization, of this seduction of "not-knowing".
The author them proposes that in the computing domain, free software
is both a reaction against, and a suitable way to resist the ugly
trickle-down of "dumbing down".
Some of it is quite amusing. She starts off talking about impulsively
purchasing a Linux CD instead of an NT upgrade for a machine, sort of
an emotional reaction to feeling more and more restricted by NT. She
then describes the installation process:
But Microsoft was determined to protect me from myself ... Windows
resisted my attempts to attempts to delete it ... A cascade of error
messages, warnings beeps; a sort of sound-and-light show---the
Wizard of Oz lighting spectacular fireworks to keep me from flinging
back the curtain to see the short fat bald man. But all that is
only a challenge for the determined engineer. The more it resisted
me, the more I knew I would enjoy the pleasure of deleting it.
Here are some other interesting quotes I include to give you a flavor
for the article.
Productivity has long been the justification for the prepackaging of
programming knowledge. But as prebuilt components accomplish larger
and larger tasks, it's no longer a question of putting up only a
window or a text box; it's a question of an entire technical
viewpoint encapsulated in a tool or component. This encapsulation
certainly results in more lines being generated more quickly, but
what happens to the quality of the code?
... and our confinement within the vendor's framework also confines
our imaginations. As our investment in the wizard's code grows, we
simply dream less freely.
... we risk becoming like auto mechanics who can only swap parts.
Our not-knowing is fine when everything works as expected. But when
something breaks or goes wrong or needs fundamental change, what
will be do but stand helpless in the face of our own creations?
And finally, a conclusion...
... this sudden movement to freeware and open source is our desire
to revisit the idea that a professional engineer can and should be
able to do the one thing that is most basic to our work: examine the
source code, the actual program, the real and unvarnished
representation of the system. I exaggerate only a little if I say
that it is a reassertion of our dignity as humans working with mere
machine' a return, quite litterally, to the source.
The second article is just an excerpt from a survey done to determine
how difficult it is to get a machine from OEM's without windows
installed.
--
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930
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