{"id":4804,"date":"2022-11-27T15:48:51","date_gmt":"2022-11-27T20:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/?p=4804"},"modified":"2022-11-27T15:48:51","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T20:48:51","slug":"programming-is-forgetting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/2022\/11\/27\/programming-is-forgetting\/","title":{"rendered":"Programming is Forgetting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Programming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic<\/strong><\/h3>

This was such an interesting talk\/article. Programming is truly making something discrete out of the infinite unknowable universe. Authors of programs, usually unintentionally,\u00a0insert their own ideas about the universe into their code. Because of this, all software is necessarily biased.<\/p>

As the internet and software continues to overwhelm our lives, doesn\u2019t the software start to become a part of the universe that it is modeling<\/strong>? Recently, I was listening to an interview with Frederick Brennan<\/a>. He is the creator of 8chan, a website which was infamously used by neo-nazis to spread the QAnon conspiracy theories during the Trump era. Brennan hasn\u2019t been involved with the site since 2016,\u00a0has renounced the views of its primary user base, and has been fighting to take the site offline. Anyways, in the interview Brennan argues that we should start thinking of the internet as\u00a0real life. The anonymous trolls who use image boards like 8chan to spread hate and misinformation, often do so because the internet doesn\u2019t feel like reality. It\u2019s something they can separate from IRL. Cloaked in anonymity they feel free to be extreme and hateful.<\/p>

So the internet might represent an impossibly small fraction of the universe but as it continues to pervade our lives, especially with ideas like the metaverse<\/em>, I think starting to reframe it as a component of the universe (at least our world) starts to feel right. How about if we are ever connected to an internet that connects the entire universe, civilizations spanning millions of galaxies. This is nearly impossible for me to imagine, but would that still represent a small fraction of the universe?<\/p>

 <\/p>\n

The Whole Earth Catalog<\/strong><\/h3>

The Whole Earth Catalog has come up in classes a number of times here at NC State. I\u2019m going to be honest, even after reading passages from it, I was continuing to have a hard time imagining exactly what it was. I came across this youtube video<\/a> that really helped me understand what it was and why it was so important.<\/p>

It seems like a catalog of ideas, facts, and products that would be of interest to people in a specific hippie subculture of the 60s. The inclusion of LL Bean products seems especially bizarre to me though. I mean, I like LL Bean products but doesn\u2019t it feel antithetical to hippie philosophy to identify with a corporate brand like that? <\/strong>It feels like this catalog is for very particular people, who does it leave out?<\/strong><\/p>

\u201cPersonal power is developing\u2014 power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the Whole Earth Catalog.\u201d I think the catalog is cool and I love that Steward Brand created it. He was using his personal power to \u201cshare his adventure with whoever is interested\u201d but I can\u2019t help but feel that the catalog encouraged or helped create a hippie stereotype. A model for other people looking to adopt the lifestyle to follow. Connecting back to Allison Parrish\u2019s talk: I think the catalog is also inherently biased because of the people creating it.<\/p>

The Whole Earth Catalog\u00a0 aligns with a lot of my own tastes but I am still confused about why it was so important and why it keeps showing up in our design classes. I hope someone can help me with this in class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Programming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker EthicThis was such an interesting talk\/article. Programming is truly making something discrete out of the infinite unknowable universe. Authors of programs, usually unintentionally,\u00a0insert their own ideas about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":4805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-now","entry-card--landscape"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/programming-is-forgetting.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p86O3z-1fu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4806,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4804\/revisions\/4806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}