Such is the nature of breakthroughs. The same was true of the Model T, or the first steamships, or the first firearms. (Primitive as all of those devices were by modern standards.)
Now, the sense of wonder attaches to devices like iPhones and iPads, and to various aspects of the Web. It attaches to tools like speech recognition and gestural interfaces.
The leading edge has moved, and the innovators with it.
Katherine
Nor was mine and I apologize for the perception that was left. My response was intended as more of a personal “here’s where and why” of the thread.
Honestly, I told three people to “buy a $400 system from walmart not a mac” just last week. I tell folks to “use linux” quite a bit. I actually force some projects here at the office to hire all new development teams to support Linux because of technological intricacies that I just don’t want to think about (umm… 35tb of db using a 5 node cluster with 6-7TB data worth of transactions per day – MS wouldn’t even scope it).
I hate to think that I am above OS wars. I am just to lazy and cheap to have anything other than apple in my house right now. Remember that your time has a $$ value and the $$ value for my time is arrogantly high hence apple is cheaper than Linux for me
Make sense?
To the rest of the post – yep. Nothing new under the sun. But there are new ways to assemble this non-new things.
Anyhoo…
No OS-wars here.
But I think the real point is a total shift in the concept of computing. A fellow student in my college at Cambridge was the first person I met who mentioned “computer”. He was reading Computer Science or whatever it was called at the time, programming something the size of a house using a tape feed. One day in 1965 I met him literally bouncing down the street with something in his arms. I asked him what made him so happy, and he said he’d just succeded in getting his program on the university computer to run, and this bundle of printout was the result … a listing of all the possible combinations of the letters in the word “orchestra”, and he was on his way back to his room to see which of the combinations were words of English … he’d already spotted “cart horse”.
My first contact with computers came in the late 70s, using a BBC micro in the Polytechnic of Central London, and rapidly graduating to using it as a terminal on the UNIX server, printing out by doing a “cat” piped to a local 9-pin printer. A few years later, I was using a PC as a terminal on the VAX network using vi to hand code my handouts in LaTeX. I loved it, and then, when I got an original Atari Jackintosh, I installed Emacs, LaTeX and TeX, so I produced my handouts on that, to produce postscript files to transfer to the Macintosh SE with an Apple laser printer which had appeared in the Faculty’s photocopy room. Gradually, I started working directly on that Mac, basically the only person who used it, as I realised that I could save myself a lot of work that way …
Since then, although I still have hankerings to go back to LaTeX, and read the MMD forum with interest, I value my time, even when procrastinating, and an operating system that just gets out of the way and gets on with it is what I want. Windows doesn’t do that for me … and in various employs and circumstances I’ve had to use Windows, and I’ve always found it frustrating. Maybe it’s because the Mac system has become ingrained. I certainly don’t want, as an early contributor to the Linux thread said she wouldn’t want to be without, “a system that I have to beat into submission”. I read the forum, thinking, perhaps I should move over to Linux, it’d be like back to my Unix and Emacs days … and then I see what you’re all having to deal with with your various distros and think “No, I don’t want that!”
So I’m like Jaysen, really … though perhaps less concerned about where Apple’s going as I’m not as deep into things technical as him. Though what I would do if Apple really moved entirely to iOS … but perhaps by then I’ll be too old to really care.
But then, on the other side, there are those like me who have had some contact with computers since they became generally available — no I didn’t have a Spectrum, a Commodore 64, an Amiga, my own BBC Micro … and no, I’ve never learnt to program as I’ve had no need — but I do feel I understand a bit about what’s going on under the hood. However, the vast majority of people these days using “computing devices” don’t have that and don’t want to. They just want to have a box that is either good to look at, or not entirely offensive to them, which runs a system which does what they think they want, running the apps they think are important to them … and for the rest they don’t care, forget it. Linux doesn’t fit with that attitude. For that vast majority, it boils down to a choice of OS-X or Windows and increasingly iOS or Android; so it’s users of those that dominate this forum.
Then there’s another thing … this is the Scrivener forum. Scrivener started out Mac-only, so there are thousands of Mac-users; then last year the Windows version appeared and seems to have a growing number of users; then Linux users started trying to get the Windows version to run under Linux, and Lee kindly started making changes to enable compiling to a version for Linux, but that clearly needs a lot of getting it to work from the users … to which end you have contributed greatly. But very few Windows users have ventured outside the “comfort” of the Windows forum into the sometimes murky depths of other parts of this site, and of the Linux users, you are the only one that I can think of.
Mark
[size=200]BeOS and Brownies[/size]
/discuss
It could very well be that I’m not extroverted enough for the iPad and other smart-phone type devices. I like distance between myself and my computers, and the iPad bridges that a bit too much.
Actually there’s a new implementation of BeOS: haiku-os.org/
I’m still waiting on delivery for my 3D chocolate printer.
All those millions and trazzillions of, "Are you sures…?? jeeezz!! gorranedache now! 
I know what you mean, Mark. I love the idea of latex and mmd, but actually, they’re high-grade overkill for what I need. Hasn’t stopped me spending of time over the last couple of weeks playing with them, though. As I do every six months or so before remembering that they’re high-grade overkill for what I need.
I had an Acorn Electron (baby brother of the BBC B[1]), Spectrum, Amiga, several generations of PC[2] running Windows and Linux before settling on the Mac 5-6 years ago. I’ve tinkered with programming several time (am currently in a bout now, with Objective-C) but not that seriously… Basically it’s as fun as learning new languages, which I also like playing at…
And I just don’t understand how people can’t be fascinated by computers. But then, I don’t understand how they can’t be fascinated by history and physics and rugby and languages and golf, either, or why they apparently think that football is interesting. How strange…
David
[1] Pedant point apology: the BBC Micro came out in 1981, not the 70s…
[2] Unless you talk to my wife in which case it was the same one. (Well, it was the same case).
Fascinated by computers? I can understand that, though generally I think of them simply as a tool … which would surprise many in my environment who don’t know me too well and think of me as an Apple-evangelist — I now have a colleague and a friend both of whom will teach them the real meaning of Apple-evangelist! — and that the data on them is what really matters to me, not the hardware.
On the other hand, as a linguist — i.e. someone in the field of Linguistics, who also happpens to have a certain command of a number of languages, including Chinese — I find it hard to understand how one could not be fascinated by language, and further than that Cognition and Neuroscience. And then, I’m also fascinated by physics and astrophysics … I’m convinced that if I had gone to a different school, one which had understood me and what makes me tick, I would probably have become a physicist. As it is, I have settled onto the scientific end of the humanities.
Surely, the two most interesting questions in the world are, “What is the nature of the Universe and where did it come from?” on the one hand, and on the other, “What is the nature of our consciousness, and how does it work?”, onto the first part of which language surely[1] gives us a window.
Mark
[1] Lovely ambiguous word, “surely”! 
I agree the fascination is mainly what we achieve with computers, but I’m in awe of the ingenuity and brilliance that it has taken to design them. I was born 5 years too early for the home computing revolution, otherwise I suspect I might have taken a very different career path. Instead I did French and Russian and enjoyed it immensely. Then entered into a career where they had only very fleeting appearances.
I agree, although as I get older “why can’t I remember where I put the car keys?” is becoming steadily more prominent…
As for the first two questions, I’m just reading The Quantum Universe (Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw) and while I can’t truthfully say that I’m understanding much more than the general principles I’m entranced both by the complexity of the theories and the brilliance of their discoverers.
I’m also listening to a podcast on another aspect of the same question: Peter Adamson’s The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps (http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/) – an ambitious attempt to do the whole of Western thought in 20 minute bits. Perfect for listening to while I’m walking the dog – and as I’ve reached episode 20 and we’re only just got to Plato, it’s a pleasure that’s going to last for some time… Some of it is familiar territory of course, but it’s always good to hear an expert (Adamson is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at Kings College, London) talk with such enthusiasm.
I studied some very, very, basic linguistics for my degree but the course was primarily focused on literature. I can understand how fascinating it must be to delve into it properly. What would you recommend as a basic introduction to the subject? The last thing even vaguely approaching linguistics I read was AD Infinitum: A biography of Latin by Ostler and I have his Empires of the Word on the shelf to read (although it’s jostling with about 200 other candidates for that honour…)
Regards
David
Warning … Much of what follows could be mistaken for something other than what it is. What follows is a conversation between open minded adults discussing a potentially explosive topic. If you are a short fuse type, move on.
I think we’ve discussed this in some length previously (Ioa-iffer (previous to being simply Ioa) and I being chief participants) and while I still hold all the same views, opinions, etc, I find that … how do I say this … It isn’t easy to put into words … I guess I no longer care. I love to ponder the meaning and purpose, but honestly I am tired. I have given up too much. I have done my time.
I guess I slammed into a wall of realization that the questions are unanswerable. Even if we could answer the questions would it matter? The encampments (of which I am accused of being in one) would simply reject the findings if they were proven wrong. If there is no actual room for enlightening those of differing opinion, or of changing your own opinion then there is nothing to discover.
That said, I still discuss, explain, explore, delve, probe, and inquire. I just don’t care what the answer will be. I am in my camp and I am comfortable. I seek no enlightenment. I revel in the mind’s ability to simply ponder. It is that amazing component of man keeps coming back to one answer-question: Does any of it matter?
Which is where I stop.
Mr X. nothing has changed in my views. Just so you know.
The perfect device.
The paper clip.
It does its job well.
Until Microsoft made it leap about the screen offering unhelpful advice. That was when I first realized I could become, in the right circumstances, a mass murderer.
Yes, else this thread wouldn’t exist. Which raises the next, even more important, question: “Which parts matter to me?”
This is the most On Topic thread I’ve read, I think.
Ok you. Let’s get this straight. It only matters in context. And unless you know the context the answer to the question is meaningless. Since we are still attempting to put into context things as basic to our every day lives as love and hate then I doubt an individual can put into context the meaning of their own life. Would Samuel Clemens have put the meaning of his life in the same context as we do today? George Washington? (I’m American so use your own famous people I don’t know any of yours). Even if we fight for and arrive at an answer to that question, it is only accurate for a very brief time.
Instead of asking, wondering, or even caring if it matters, wouldn’t we be better off making sure that it matters?
That is a question that can be both answer and acted on.
Darn you and making me think this early in the morning!
I’ve spent years practising getting others to think, it saves effort at my end.
Which can be rephrased, “Wouldn’t we be better off making sure that it matters to me?”
I’m not really trying to be obtuse, nor am I rabid individualist from the far right of the political spectrum. We will always value things from the context of our own life experiences, accumulated knowledge and associated perceptions of the world - all of which develop and change throughout our lives.
I suspect we are actually saying similar things, and that is a scary notion on these forums.
It would be. But I think we are safe.
Your inclusion of “me” is not what I intended. Yet my own logic locks me in the corner of agreeing with you. If I can not see the “context” then the only way to evaluate is through my own view of what is significant. Therefore “matters to me” becomes valid. But the view that I can not perceive a larger context, and then acting on that view, quickly causes society to call me bad names if I act only in my private context. I say “leave me out”. I am not playing the game anymore. My context stops where I choose. That does make me the rabid individualist that thinks the libertarians may be too liberal.
At least that is what I am when it suits my context.
Why are you making me think so late in the night. Stop it.