Most of my work the last few decades have involved that interface... that point of contact between human beings and the computer.
I've written previously about my earliest experience with computers in the early 1970s, while still in high school, where I advocated for the first computer programming course at Colby High School.
We ran our simple Basic programs from punch cards on a mainframe 100 miles away, and we had to drive there in a car to do so! So much for digital efficiency.
Since then I've taken some classes to learn Visual Basic and C++, but quickly decided I didn't want to spend a lot of my time writing code. Still, it's nice to have an idea of what is actually going on behind the screens.
When I was started editing a regional gay newspaper in the 1980s and 90s we used Word for DOS, dial-up telephone modems, and bulletin boards (BBS) to transmit news reports across the state and eventually from around the country.
I barely remember now how complex and alien all of that seemed at the time: bitrates and protocols and drivers, oh my! Still, I learned what I needed to learn to bring information to people who were otherwise isolated or felt separated from their own community.
By 2000, my major foray into the corporate world resulted in... (read more here)
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Michael Perry
maineveny111
tdetuff
Lara Riscol
Fudo Myoö
Bellwether Vance
Salon.com
Comments
I think we are love with computers because they help us to connect. Before the internet, my computer was a tool, a very nice typewriter, really-- I needed it, but I wasn't in love with it. Now it's much more. When the hurricanes come, and we are without power for a few days, the first thing we do when the power comes back on is head for the computers. Okay, first we flush the toilets and shower, but it's a quick shower!
you know the line about lies, damned lies and statistics? You can crunch the numbers to say all kinds of things.
one thing I've found is that, like any tool, computers just make easy what it is sometimes hard for humans to do. Collecting data for easy retrieval. Complex calculations. Finding dispersed people of similar minds, feelings and experiences. Loving. Hating.
it's far easier to love someone you've never really interacted with - you're free to project all the things you imagine that you can't actually see.
The same with hate.
It's also a lot easier to hate over a wire, because you're spared from seeing the impact of that hate. Like a high-altitude bomber, you only see the bombs drop on their targets, never the faces they fall on.
the internet can bring together cancer survivors, and teens discovering their sexuality is going to get them beaten up at their school, and lets them know that they're not alone, and they're not unusual and others feel as they do. There's someone there to tell them they're not wrong. It does the same thing for racial supremacists and pedophiles, too.