The one question we don't need to ask
1975 was unquestionably a major point of inflection in the Long March of Deepstate toward total obliteration of civilization.

Edmund Berkeley had been quietly editing the establishment journal of the ACM since the late '50s. In the '70s he got pissed, and he steered the journal toward more noisy and serious anti-establishment advocacy.

The Feb '75 issue includes two articles that show what it felt like to live inside an inflection point.

= = = = =

First:

On p 28, Joe Raben, a prof of English at CUNY, writes on the future of computers in education.

It's worth remembering that mechanical and electronic teaching machines had already been around for a hundred years, and had already established the operating methods of courseware. Present the material, then present a series of questions and record the answers.

Personal computers were EXACTLY on the inflection point in '75. IBM had just introduced its first PC, which didn't succeed commercially; and DEC personal machines were already common but not really general-purpose computers.

Raben is pushing hard for a more individual approach to teaching, more like apprenticeship. He foresees the interactive potential of computers only in a vague abstract way, even though mechanical and (non-digital) electronic machines were already fully interactive.

In this new learning environment, the student need not be restricted to verbal or symbolic information. Since the cathode-ray tube on his terminal is designed to project visual images, he can call up all kinds of pictures, and the treasures of the world's art collections will be his to command.

He can have performed on a tape recorder whatever music he is interested in hearing, while on his screen he watches the notes that represent it. He can hear great poetry spoken, he can watch a surgical operation performed, he can have a geometrical theorem demonstrated, he can watch the re-enactment of a historical event.

And no nervous human teacher, anxious about distractions to himself and to the other students in the class, will have to concern himself over whether that student is chewing gum, doodling, or in any other way relieving the tensions of his own concentration. We give adult workers in our factories soft music to ease their efforts; when can we begin to show equal sympathy for the strains we impose on hyperactive kids when we compel them to sit for hours and listen to us talk at them?

He misses the main purpose of apprenticeship. Job training doesn't just individualize the passive experience of a classroom. Training engages the student in a PRODUCTIVE task. Making things, serving customers.

In '82, just a few years after the '75 inflection point, many programmers (including me) were starting to use the interactive potential of the computer for job training. Visual graphics had been around since the '20s on analog computers, and since 1950 on specialized digital terminals. Audio was much slower to develop, as always; but it was expensively available on PCs in '81. (A professional-level ADC/DAC accessory board was $1500.)

= = = = =

Second:

On p 36, Richard Sprague goes deep into Deepstate's nefarious activities, which had just been fakely "exposed" by the Watergate crap. Watergate was meant to attach the evil to Nixon, then kick out Nixon to "remove the evil", like an anti-rust anode on a ship.

Sprague wasn't fooled. He had been organizing computer professionals to analyze aspects of the JFK assassination, and had seen Deepstate's stings and controlled opposition up close.

An organization I belong to, called "The Organizing Committee for the Fifth Estate," has decided to concentrate on the issue. It is the growing, illegal, immoral, and clandestine use of various methods and policies by the intelligence "community" in the U.S. This ·development could lead us toward what we may call "technofascism," a dictatorship in the U.S. by technologists in the Interests of the military-industrial complex. The methods involved include the use of computer technology and information systems. The Fifth Estate defines the clandestine intelligence "community" as including secret divisions or departments or contractors or subcontractors of agencies and groups at four levels of government; federal, state, regional, and local.

Evidence is mounting that all four levels are currently increasing (and not decreasing) the amount of illegal, unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional activity, aimed at reducing or limiting the rights of citizens and increasing the power of the clandestine groups.

On the fucking dot.

To sum up, I recommend again, as three controversial issues for discussion:

1. Who is assassinating our political leaders and why?

2. What activities are leading us toward "technofascism," how can they be exposed and stopped?

3. Where and how is the American establishment using technology in other countries around the world to help suppress people and murder them?

On all the fucking dots.

50 years later his grim prophecies have come true, and the genuine opposition never got any traction.

The metaquestions are:

4. What happened to those three questions?

5. What happened to the people who were asking them?

A question that DOESN'T need to be asked is:

0. How did the entire tech establishment join Deepstate?

We know the answer to this one. Epstein.

And those dissidents WERE aware of the power of an Epstein.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Experiential education, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 7:10 AM