linklog #005

How to help someone use a computer, Phil Agre (1996)

How to help someone use a computer

A computer is a means to an end. The person you're helping probably cares mostly about the end. This is reasonable.

Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. When they get nailed by a false assumption about the computer's behavior, tell them their assumption was reasonable. Tell *yourself* that it was reasonable.

Lowtech Manifesto, James Wallbank (1999)

LOWTECH MANIFESTO

A rant approximating the content of this document was delivered to an audience of new media artists and activists by James Wallbank, Coordinator of Redundant Technology Initiative, at The Next 5 Minutes conference in Amsterdam, March 1999.

"Lowtech" means technology that is cheap or free. Technology moves on so fast that right now we can recover low-end Pentiums and fast Macintoshes from the trash. Lowtech upgrades every year. But we don't have to pay for it.

A Rant About “Technology”, Ursula K. Le Guin (2005)

Ursula K. Le Guin — Ursula on Writing: A Rant about "Techonolgy"

Ursula K. Le Guin on the presence of technology in her work

We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called “technology” at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers — as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe...

Turing Complete User, Olia Lialina (2012)

Turing Complete User

With the disappearance of the computer, something else is silently becoming invisible as well — the User.

There is nothing one user can do, that another can’t given enough time and respect.

AI’s Walking Dog, Brian Eno (2024)

AI’s Walking Dog - Boston Review

Today’s tech inverts the value of the creative process.

I suspect this is because the joy of art isn’t only the pleasure of an end result but also the experience of going through the process of having made it. When you go out for a walk it isn’t just (or even primarily) for the pleasure of reaching a destination, but for the process of doing the walking. For me, using AI all too often feels like I’m engaging in a socially useless process, in which I learn almost nothing and then pass on my non-learning to others.

until next time

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