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Comment by maximinus_thrax | Hacker News Reader

I have some issues with this blog post. On one hand

> We like to talk of 'engineering', but chemical engineering was alchemy in an earlier life, and I believe our field is no different.

while on the other hand

> Computing being about information first, and the computer being a tool we use to better our lives. 40 years on these these ideas have been pushed to the fringes.

Maybe this is evolution? Maybe when society runs on information and literally everything is a computer (your car, your phone, your watch, etc..) we've kind of moved on from the mindset of the past when the computer was a 'thing' to use when you need it and not something ubiquitous?

> Can we treat the past with honesty, setting aside what we no longer need, and recalling what is useful but forgotten once more?

I'm trying to figure out what this means. Can someone help?

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I'm trying to figure out what this means, it seems extracted from some electoral campaign. Can someone help?

That hurts - can you at least tell me it seems extracted from an electoral campaign from a previous century to soften the blow?

But what I was trying to get it is this - we either see the past and think "Gee weren't those people dumb with their 8 bit machines and in-door smoking", or we romanticize the past as some kind of "back when the world was simpler, no cellphones in sight just living in the moment" tripe.

It's better to be nuanced. Treat them as if they were just human beings like you or I - which they were. Look at some 60s, 70s or 80s computing idea and say say "that was a dead end and not relevant anymore", or "wow I really like how they were thinking about things, maybe that's worth re-visiting".

Sorry, I may have been too caustic with that remark. I have edited out, it was not my intention to offend. I think I get what you mean, thanks for responding.

Not at all! All in good fun.

> > Computing being about information first, and the computer being a tool we use to better our lives. 40 years on these these ideas have been pushed to the fringes.

> Maybe this is evolution? Maybe when society runs on information and literally everything is a computer (your car, your phone, your watch, etc..) we've kind of moved on from the mindset of the past when the computer was a 'thing' to use when you need it and not something ubiquitous?

I just think that the capacity to modify our surrounding environment is essential to what makes us human.

if we lose this ability in the computer world we feel as if we're getting choked because as I said, I have chosen to believe that modifying what I consider "my environment" (which for better or for worse includes my computer) is part of what defines me as a human

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