Unless I maintain vigilance, I tend to be rather rule bound. It’s a part of my personality that I’m not fond of, so I do my best to be aware of my response in situations. That’s why this quote, from A Word a Day struck me as being noteworthy: Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a …
Do You Care If Big Brother (or Anyone Else) is Watching?
I just read an interesting analysis by Cory Doctorow, known to some (many, perhaps) as a blogger, columnist, and science-fiction author, with perspectives on the so-called information society that I find worth considering. The piece in question deals with why in/on-the-street security cameras (known generally as CCTV) don’t deter criminals generally, and those who were involved in the recent mobs …
Spending Time Well
I’ve been using computers since 1968. I taught myself BASIC via a time-share arrangement, using a 110 Baud teletype connected to a computer several hundred miles away. Storage was on paper tape, and execution times were glacial, but I was using a computer! Time wore on. The personal computer age arrived, and I got very familiar with command-line control, first …
Being Prepared
I’d been having a long-term conversation with a friend, largely about his ongoing state of anxiety. He came to realize that he was concerned about not being prepared to deal with things–not when they arose, but before they arose. He’d spend hours, perseverating about things as they are, and projecting an infinitude of possible futures. I tried to get him …
Perspectives on Time-keeping
A recurrent topic of discussion around here is the way technologies that we grew up with ‘Way Back When are being superseded by newer ones. An underlying assumption in many of these conversations is that folks much younger than we are losing out in some way as these transitions take place. Today I became aware of another such, with the …