Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Global poopspace
Another symptom of the loss of boundaries: Everyone is letting out their inner autist. We can't tell the difference between small spheres and large spheres, between local and global namespaces.
Tech talk has always been necessary and normal within the tech club. When two gunsmiths are talking about guns, it's all numbers. Caliber, rifling, trigger force. When two radio hams are talking, it's all numbers. Ohms, field strength, Q-values. Same inside any profession. Some are less numerical, but they compensate with extra piles of internal abbreviations and inside jokes.
Now we talk numbers all the time in every situation.
I find myself doing it. Discussing tubes a couple days ago, I was all Vp and ckts and 40Ω. In earlier eras I would have felt the need to keep a publicly written discussion more general, would have provided more analogies and explanations. Now I don't give a fuck. Nobody is listening anyway, might as well have fun.
When you read scientific publications or magazines from earlier eras, you can immediately sense what's missing now. Even in a magazine that has SCIENCE in its title, authors tried to stay above the decimal weeds, tried to reach the non-expert. Radio programs like Info Please featured highfalutin intellectuals answering intellectual questions, but again they never dropped into tech jargon.
The new way isn't necessarily bad. The old way opened more doors for kids in poor families or poor schools. You could pick up a magazine or listen to a program and get a sense of what geologists or literary critics do in a day's work. Now you just get numbers.
Labels: defensible spaces
¶ 5:49 AM
