gfish | (no subject)

(no subject)

Someone just walked by my window talking about hexadecimal and ASCII. I had the ghost of an impulse to run out and strike up a conversation. Which would be totally weird, and it makes me sad to realize that there is no sense of camaraderie when it comes to being into computers anymore. For that matter, who the hell would say they're into computers these days? That's like saying you're into breathing. We've lost a lot of frontiers over the last 15 years.

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that's the problem with being an explorer and a pioneer of any stripe -- your main goal and hope is to gradually erode the exact arena that you find most exciting.

DISENFRANCHISED! :D

Huh. If I were in the right sort of mood, and they struck me as geeky enough, I totally would have... okay, maybe not hex and ASCII...

Exactly. It depends how far you're into computers.

I know exactly how you feel, so have these sympathies.

The word "geek" has been so badly diluted that it hardly means anything anymore. People call themselves geeks just for buying electronic entertainment devices at superstores these days. I've taken to calling myself a nerd, because the word seems to have fallen out of favor before it could be so badly diluted.

I wouldn't claim to be "into computers" since I quit doing scientific programming in FORTRAN in 1990.

I sympathize, greatly.

I've noticed this too, and I actually feel pretty good about it. We are shifting our language from a semantics of *things* toward a semantics of *relationships*. The 'thing'-ness of a computer is really pretty shallow, it's a noisy beige box, so what? But the relationships within that box, and what that box might be connected to, can get very interesting.

As this newer reality trickles into common usage, more of my utopian shopping list becomes possible.

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