racism and computers (no connection, sorry)

[Kragen Sitaker]

Am I the only one who thinks the use of the term "brother" to mean
"black man", and "sister" to mean "black woman", is racist?  It's as if
I used "friend" to mean "white person".  "Yeah, he's my friend, but
he's not a friend, you know?"

Granted, it would be a lot worse if it were being used by the dominant
group, but I think it perpetuates the racist social structures of our
society.

* * *

Dave Winer says in http://nirvana.userland.com/dwiner/outlinersProgramming:

	 I felt at the time and still do, that computers are primarily
	 significant because they make people better communicators.

Wow, good call, Dave.  Essentially every significant application of
computers has been either
- real-time control and measurement,
- helping people communicate, 
- playing computer games, or
- incestuous: making computer software to do one of the above.

Spreadsheets are not primarily a tool for doing math more quickly than
we can do it by hand; they are primarily tools for communicating
ideas.  The same (even more so!) is true of word processors, email, the
Web, multimedia, IRC, phone switches, Internet phone applications, etc.

Communication is sort of a broad term, though; when I read someone's
web page, it's more like reading a book than talking to a person.  When
I grep through my mailbox for key terms, it's even further removed from
communication -- but the end result is that I get connected to somebody
else's ideas.

So that's what it's all about -- connecting people to ideas.  My ideas
to other people, and me to other people's ideas, and sometimes even me
to my own ideas.  That's the main reason computers are significant.

Computation, as such, is almost unimportant.

--
/* By Kragen Sitaker, http://pobox.com/~kragen/puzzle5.html */
char b[2000],m[]={1,-80,-1,80};main(){int i,x=1000,s=2000,d=0;while(1+(i=
getchar()))switch(i){case'f':b[x]=1;case'g':x=(x+m[d/2]+s)%s;d--;case'+':d+=2;
case'-':d+=7;d%=8;}for(i=0;i!=s;i++)putchar(" #"[b[i]]);}