Now you tell me where's this from
I frankly don't understand people who buy books ; I've tried using one recently and it was an appaling experience. There's no full text search ; there's no copy-paste ; there's no implicit link I can drag into a terminal to cat-pipe with it. What the fuck is even the point of pretending the bitmap's like text ? It's not like text, it's not even remotely, not vaguely, not anything even slightly similar. Printed matter is exactly like the handywork of those morons who link screenshots of webpages to "show you" : simply dysfunctional, and to a comedic extent.
And besides, if you're going to delve into ahistoric past, why pick that particular anachronism ? Why not read Fraktur off cured dead pets' pelts directly, like 900ish Capuchin monkeys ? Go like they went, .8 words per second, spend an hour per page and a lifetime with a single "book", what diagonal reading of whole pages in blinks of an eye, who has any need for that! Then perhaps wonder in amazement as to why exactly your "manner of thinking" starts developing similarities to long expired farts' nonsense, why not. If everything looks like a nail to the man holding a hammer sure as fuck everything looks just about like the 20th century to the man reading printed paper. How the fuck else could it look, on that premise ; and haven't you had quite enough of that derpy indistinct century already ?
Or maybe it's just because God did it. Maybe the reason you end up retracing the history of idiots whenever you limit yourself to the tools and usages and usances and conventions of idiots is that they were right all along, huh. Do you suppose if you spent your days subsistence hunting and your nights sleeping for lack of artificial lighting you'd believe in the great wolf spirit and have annual festivals of being a fucking stone age primitive ? Or would it also be a case of "clearly, this is right -- as proven by the fact that it self-replicates in similar contexts". Fleas and lice are just as right for just about the same reason, you know, maybe all those medieval bloodletting doctors were right as well!
But be all that as it may : to spread the joy of suffering an' share torment with the group, can you tell me where's this from ?
A question lately arose about the refurnishing of the house. On their return from a visit to [...] the ladies took it into their heads that the parlors looked bare and old-fashioned, and it was decided by them in secret conclave that a change was necessary.
"What!" said he, in a towering passion, "isn't it enough that you spend your time and money in vinegar to sour sweet peaches, and your sugar to sweeten crab-apples, that you must turn the house you were born in topsy-turvy? God help us! we've a house with windows to let the light in, and you want curtains to keep it out; we've plastered the walls to make them white, and now you want to paste blue paper over them; we've waxed floors to walk on, and we must pay [...] a [...] for a carpet to save the oak plank! Begone with your nonsense, ye demented jades!"
No ? Why not, you don't really need machine-indexes and all that fanciful numeric crap, do you ? Your memory's good enough for you, and what else nonsense, God's will.
Bleargh.
Tuesday, 18 February 2020
That would be "The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV".
Machine-indexes are openly available for every human. In fact, for every machine. Before indexes, we had books. Not every human knew to read and not everyone knew what to read, not to mention had money for books, so we already have a separation. Before books, we had an oral culture. Now, that was something!
Today we have minicomputers in our pockets, and we no longer need to remember formulas. What for? Technology made us dumb and incompetents. And dumb is our future, cause your book is already "in the cloud".
Text (as per your definition) is the killer of the message. Do you recall, reader, that sweet old tale?...
Tuesday, 18 February 2020
> That would be "The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV".
No, actually, it'd be gutenberg.org item #18776, which isn't nearly the same thing. You've not in your life seen either wit or america, let alone any such volume of attempted collection of their respective byproducts, let even aloner the set in question.
> Today we have minicomputers in our pockets, and we no longer need to remember formulas. What for?
Are you chanting or what is it ?
Nevermind the pockets, what you've got is cock up your rectum so far down it's actually up again, and it's making the pneumatic arrangement issue noise (apparently on the misplaced expectation it might be confused for human speech, on the flimsy basis of very superficial similarity of sound ?)
Tuesday, 18 February 2020
Have I missed something not visiting America? It was there, loud and clear, in my comment: "your book is already in the cloud". That kinda covers the wit part also. Not to mention my comment was not meant for you, except for the last bit.
Otherwise, all well? This is for you, btw.
Tuesday, 18 February 2020
You've missed the ability to talk of it as a thing you know. The same thing you've missed by not reading that book : not having read it means you can't talk of it as if it were yours. Not enslaving women means they're not your property, on it goes in this vein ; and no, slinking about and pretending presumptuously to appartenence to categories you imagined (transparently for the very purpose of thus "resolving" this problem in your own mind) is neither functional nor, ultimately, permissible.
Similarily there's no "we" uniting you and I ; recourse to some imaginary "humanity" to force this impossible identity works no better indeed : you're not human either, not to any kind of standard I'd recognize, and so the division perdures. From where you sit, you can only talk at things, but not with anyone. That includes me.
Wednesday, 19 February 2020
> You've missed the ability to talk of it as a thing you know. The same thing you've missed by not reading that book : not having read it means you can't talk of it as if it were yours. Not enslaving women means they're not your property, on it goes in this vein ; and no, slinking about and pretending presumptuously to appartenence to categories you imagined (transparently for the very purpose of thus "resolving" this problem in your own mind) is neither functional nor, ultimately, permissible.
Fine. I mean, I did not "resolve the problem in my own mind", I merely provided an accurate answer to a concrete question of yours, and I did it without even reading the book, but fine.
That was the first phrase of my comment. The rest of my comment was about your topic, not your book.
> Similarily there's no "we" uniting you and I ; recourse to some imaginary "humanity" to force this impossible identity works no better indeed : you're not human either, not to any kind of standard I'd recognize, and so the division perdures. From where you sit, you can only talk at things, but not with anyone. That includes me.
At least you're not kissing my ass. This alone should be a reason to step here more often.
Wednesday, 19 February 2020
So you provided an answer, that part was fine. You also provided some nonsense about how some imaginary "we" is going about with "microprocessors in our pockets", which is about as wild as it gets. It's not like those damn things are yours in any sense, they're just the spike your owner put up your butt, it works for him not for you. A dog on a leash, "we go about with leather products on our necks".
Wednesday, 19 February 2020
By "we" I mean the society. It's how the world goes, from a selected elite of initiates that have access to books, to the widespread of printed paper, to the digital text in our machines, to the micro-devices that falsely pretend to be computers but nevertheless manage to be smarter than their masters.
I am not enslaved by my smart-phone. It's there cause it's more convenient when I want to chat with people abroad. But I don't use it for pseudo-gaming, pseudo-computing, etc; I'm not that bored. And I never had one until it was given to me as a present. I also never had a laptop; they're not computers either. But I digress.
So yeah, text as a computer string is more powerful (in the vein of more convenient and accessible) than text as a symbol (printed bitmap). But this is the very reason why text as a computer string carries less meaning than text as a symbol.
Thursday, 20 February 2020
Stop being a fucking dork already. "By X I mean Y" no you fucking well don't, these things you dream up to justify your nonsense don't exist, and won't start to exist by chaining more of the nonsense together. It was faulty "reasoning" on the first pass, it'll stay the same on the n-th pass.
That you go about with cock in your pockets thinking you have "access" to "processors" is a problem of your cluelenssness, not of the world outside.
> I am not enslaved by my smart-phone. It's there cause it's more convenient
I lulzed. Good enough, let's leave it at that.
Thursday, 20 February 2020
I don't have access to processors, I have access to people far away. And I don't dream of justifying anything. That's a "we" you felt the need to include in just so you can later say you're not part of it. I'm not responsible for your feelings. Didn't you say there is no "we"? Then why do you keep projecting your mental approach onto my way of speaking? This is another flagrant contradiction, but we'll leave it at that. And by "we", I mean "I".
You're not so good at turning a discussion about a topic (books & text) into a discussion about the dork who's making an argument. Actually, there was no discussion about the topic! It was all about the person who's not a human, but a thing. If I'm a thing, then I must be a mirror.
Friday, 21 February 2020
Mmmkay