IVIV (1) There Will be Computers for This

[Michael Bailey]

alice wellintown wrote:
> I agree, however, while technology itself (the tools themselves) is
> neutral, the leverage of tools is increasing. That is, a tool, like a
> hammer or a sword is an extension of the human hand and affords the
> worker a flexibility that machine tools do not. Machines afford even
> less flexibility. Information machines even less.

some tools you can pick up and carry, some you can't; you don't swing
a computer but you can't type on a hammer...

...isn't the main issue not so much the nature
of any particular technology, but the social conventions followed by
the people who use it?  These are by nature
flexible (ie, there is a bunch of ways you could conceivably build a
house, staff an assembly line, generate software,
etc etc)

(My favorite, and nobody uses this yet, is my own invention: I call it
"wamts" accounting.  "we all make the same"
In a world filled with people of my philosophical bent, it would be
f*cking self-evident that you need everybody to get anything done
and paying more for one thing than another is jarring to the
sensibilities and counterproductive.)



-- 
"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the
revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world
declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." -
Martin Luther King