Computer Love/Hate

[Turniphead]

Sometimes I have a love/hate relationship with computers. I've gone as far as purposely not using them for a month or so at a time. But normally I spend a lot of time on them.

The main things I use them for are information, programming, digital artwork.

-- Information: I love the wide range of sources and sheer quantity. I hate how easily I get distracted. It's so easy to sit down in order to look up the weather or something, and end up sitting there for multiple hours until I realize I had been about to go do something else. Books are much easier to get distraction free info from.

--Programming:This is a more recent one. I love how fun it can be. I hate how frustrating it can be(usually for fringe reasons rather than the programming it's self. Ehhhh... hard to do without a computer.

-- Digital artwork: I love how easy/fast it is to try out different ideas. I hate how usually I hit a point where I get really annoyed with it and just want to reach into the computer and start moving things around with my hands. I definitely prefer painting on paper, but then the paper ends up being scanned into the computer anyways.

Oh and games... when trying to make them I also have the same problem as the artwork. It's too indirect.

I often feel like things done on computers are somewhat pointless because of their intangibility. Maybe that's just the current state computing is at, and it will fell less like that as we move towards a hybrid reality where computers are integrated into the physical world.

Anyone else have similar feelies, or do you all just loooove these computing things 24/7.


--edit: I guess I could have posted this in science and technology... It seemed more about feelings than the actual technology, maybe?

 

[Architect]

Sometimes I have a love/hate relationship with computers.

For me it's basically love. When one of my computers breaks I get really upset, like a family member or friend is sick. Not kidding.

 

[Turniphead]

Really? What is that makes it actually upsetting. You obviously have the money to replace it...

Hmm... I guess I haven't had a computer fail on me yet. Just get old and slow, and battery problems. That was annoying. I get sad that they become basically useless with age. Then I don't know what to do with it. Still functions, but not in a helpful way.

I would say that my main computer is probably the object I would be most upset about loosing, but probably not in a family is now sick way.

I guess that might be part of what I hate about them. The dependancy.
Yup.
I don't like it.

 

[Seed-Wad]

Computers, and then mostly the information (or, *potential* information), are really addictive to me. I have, like you, gone through some time without a computer. Forcedly, as in these times my computer would be broken. These times, spanning from days to weeks have always been very nice. I am no longer procrastinating, wasting my time on useless and unfulfilling activities. I get around to being productive and then in the evening to have the calmth to e.g. read a book and have some hot cacao in an armchair, instead of being trapped in a kind of limbo behind my computer.

On the other hand, I need my computer for work, keeping contact with friends, programming (what I also really enjoy, as one of the few things), shopping, etc.

It would be nice to have my computer a couple of meters down the street, so that I don't get tempted when I'm at home, but still have the option to get online to do some important stuff online.

 

[Architect]

Really? What is that makes it actually upsetting. You obviously have the money to replace it...

It's like when you have a pet that gets sick. You know you can fix (take it to the vet) or replace it, but it's an individual that you've become used to in your life.

I guess that might be part of what I hate about them. The dependancy.
Yup.
I don't like it.

Life is built on dependencies.

 

[Cognisant]

For me it's basically love. When one of my computers breaks I get really upset, like a family member or friend is sick. Not kidding.

Yeah, though I'd describe it more like having a set of mechanical wings on my back and one of them gets broken, computers are freedom and joy to me.

I suppose you need a tenacious personality to really enjoy technology, I mean it's like magic, in terms of usefulness it is magic, but when I say magic you think of Harry Potter waving a wand or some sorcerer throwing fireballs with nothing but his hands and well and honestly it's not like that but that's so lazy, real magic isn't easy, real magic is hard and you either have the affinity for it or you don't.

If magic was easy everyone would do it and it wouldn't be magic anymore.

Programming is a prime example, yes it can be frustrating but you have to remember that you're making a computer do something new, something that you specifically want it to do and that is awesome. I'm a visual thinker so when I program I see spheres as values (that integers, strings or whatever are stored in) and curved lines going to where those values are used, algorithms are knots on the end of these strings and a function is a bundle of knots, sometimes in a row, sometimes in a circle.

I digress, point is when something doesn't work I sit back and formulate theories based on my mental model then test those theories by repeatedly editing, compiling and running my program and observing what happens, which is fun because there's always a reason, it maybe obtuse or it may be a typo, but there's always a reason and as long as I keep making theories and testing them I'm never quite stumped. Then if I solve the problem and it turned out to be a syntax thing I may play with it a bit, trying a few different things to see what does and doesn't work, improving my understanding of the syntax even if I don't know exactly why it is that way.

If that doesn't sound fun then you just don't have the personality for it.

 

[walfin]

I love the computer largely. It's there when I want it. It generally does what it's told, when it's told. If it screws up I switch it off and go to bed.

Not so the smartphone. It buzzes at all hours. It's hard to code with the phone. And yet I cannot do without it. I need to switch it on so others can reach me although I hate it that pesky humans can reach me when they want and not when I want. And it's like a drug, it keeps me glued to its screen like the computer never could. I'm actually typing this on my phone, in the train, because I'm so incredibly addicted to it, and I hate myself for being an addict.

Damn the smartphones. What wouldn't I give to go back to a world where computers were all there were.

 

[Architect]

Beautifully said Cog ..

YI suppose you need a tenacious personality to really enjoy technology, I mean it's like magic, in terms of usefulness it is magic, but when I say magic you think of Harry Potter waving a wand or some sorcerer throwing fireballs with nothing but his hands and well and honestly it's not like that but that's so lazy, real magic isn't easy, real magic is hard and you either have the affinity for it or you don't.

No it IS magic. A powerful magic, one mankind has thought (and worried) about for a long time. The one thing that makes us uniquely human is our supple intelligence, humor, ability to love, etc, and what when computers (or Artificial Intelligences) can do the same thing?

Still computers are magic, they are taking over jobs left and right, a very powerful magic. Lawyers (especially Legal Aides), doctors (there is a type of diagnosis that only computers are qualified to make anymore as humans are too error prone), support personnel and car drivers are just a few examples. It's all based on programming, and as Kurzweil points out ...

A word on magic: when I was reading the Tom Swift Jr. books, I was also an avid magician. I enjoyed the delight of my audiences in experiencing apparently impossible transformations of reality. In my teen years, I replaced my parlor magic with technology projects. I discovered that unlike mere tricks, technology does not lose its transcendent power when its secrets are revealed. I am often reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Consider J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories from this perspective. These tales may be imaginary, but they are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only a few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realized through the technologies I will explore in this book. Playing quidditch and transforming people and objects into other forms will be feasible in full-immersion virtual-reality environments, as well as in real reality, using nanoscale devices. More dubious is the time reversal (as described inHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), although serious proposals have even been put forward for accomplishing something along these lines (without giving rise to causality paradoxes), at least for bits of information, which essentially is what we comprise. (See the discussion in chapter 3 on the ultimate limits of computation.)

Consider that Harry unleashes his magic by uttering the right incantation. Of course, discovering and applying these incantations are no simple matters. Harry and his colleagues need to get the sequence, procedures, and emphasis exactly correct. That process is precisely our experience with technology. Our incantations are the formulas and algorithms underlying our modern-day magic. With just the right sequence, we can get a computer to read a book out loud, understand human speech, anticipate (and prevent) a heart attack, or predict the movement of a stock- market holding. If an incantation is just slightly off mark, the magic is greatly weakened or does not work at all.

One might object to this metaphor by pointing out that Hogwartian incantations are brief and therefore do not contain much information compared to, say, the code for a modern software program. But the essential methods of modern technology generally share the same brevity. The principles of operation of software advances such as speech recognition can be written in just a few pages of formulas. Often a key advance is a matter of applying a small change to a single formula.

Sussman also talks about Magic (0:28)

The Magic of Computers

If magic was easy everyone would do it and it wouldn't be magic anymore.

No what happens is that people take it for granted. It's still magic though. People use magic all the time, to a person from not too long ago.

 

[Cognisant]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kEv5QVE7mHI

 

[Turniphead]

Life is built on dependencies.

So why add more? Maybe computers actually alleviate some dependencies though. But I do like having the skills to live without them if it came to it.


I tend to make dichotomies in a reactionary way. So I probably just feel hateful towards computers when I binge on them(especially in unproductive ways). At that point I decide it's the computers fault rather than my inability to focus.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

Maybe computers actually alleviate some dependencies though.

But they undoubtedly exacerbate others:

Sieve-like memory + Laziness + Google effect = Apparent Idiot
(i mean myself, not others in thread!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_effect

Because of this effect i live in constant terror that the internet will 'break'.
So it's a love/hate thing for me. But great business for HP.

 

[Turniphead]

Also: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html



--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D33U0OAkhuk

 

[just george]

Just get old and slow, and battery problems. That was annoying. I get sad that they become basically useless with age. Then I don't know what to do with it. Still functions, but not in a helpful way.

Why not reformat/reinstall and give the old one away to someone who doesn't have one? A crappy computer to you is a blessing to someone who doesn't have one.

Anyway I love computers, just like I love the rest of my tools (I looove tools). When one of mine breaks down, it's irritating because I have that many fewer tools in my toolbox that day.

 

[Turniphead]

Why not reformat/reinstall and give the old one away to someone who doesn't have one? A crappy computer to you is a blessing to someone who doesn't have one.

Yah, my partner uses it sometimes. It's an old macbook without a battery, plus the charging cable is covered with tape because for some reason it's slowly disintegrating. So a couple hundred dollars to make it even giveawayable.

 

[just george]

Yah, my partner uses it sometimes. It's an old macbook without a battery, plus the charging cable is covered with tape because for some reason it's slowly disintegrating. So a couple hundred dollars to make it even giveawayable.

A couple hundred? No way. That's what I thought as well (I recently gave a laptop away with a screwed battery and a missing key) but when I looked on ebay and gumtree, batteries were selling for like eleven bucks.

I was stunned at how cheap everything has become now that the laptop recyclers have become organized. They even sell individual keys for 2 bucks. It's a completely different game, IME