Timothy C. May wrote:
At 12:50 PM -0500 11/11/96, jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca wrote:
"Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
Well, I think there clearly _is_ a gender gap on these sorts of issues.
Technologies that matter make daily life less obnoxious, and you can leverage them all the time. The Net is going to start mattering in a significant way when it relieves people of the burden of dealing with the garbage inherent in the information flow of everyday life. The net is going to matter when I can rely on
Well, in the 23 years I've been on the Net in one way or another, I can honestly say it is _increased_ my exposure to garbage. The notion that computers are time-savers is fraught with problems. For some tasks, it clearly is. But for other tasks and situations, it's a time sink. I view it primarily as a communications mechanism, e.g., lists like this, the Web, news, etc. Your mileage may vary. Notions that computers will be widely accepted because of their "time-saving" powers I file right next to claims that computers will be useful for storing recipes and balancing checkbooks.
Huh? Just this year, I wrote a letter to an insurance company about some bozo who hit my car, and thought he'd get away with it. The computer allowed me to keep re-editing the letter until it was perfected, which task would have been not feasible or simply would not have been done manually, for what should be obvious reasons. I won my case, and the other guy is suffering those nasty payments... I even beat the CHP on that one.... Three to four years ago, I used my computer to edit my cover letters and resumes, to perfect them, to send out to hundreds of potential employers, which resulted in my getting the exact job I wanted (which now pays very well), in spite of the fact that I started looking in L.A. just when the riots commenced, at the same time that tens of thousands of "technical" people were laid off from various defense contractors. Of course, I used my computers to perfect certain computer skills (for which I never went to College) which landed me a whole series of nice jobs from 1979 through 1992, but that doesn't count, right? I hesitate to admit this, but the bottom line is that the computer is a tool that can give one person an advantage over another, for which messaging and communications is just incidental. Since we are in fact an animal predator (as humans), I don't think you have to have a whole lot of imagination to understand where that goes...