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There are some who view software as a social construct (like Pieter Hientjes), and I think it's a valuable perspective. So if we know about the intrinsic brokenness of software, can we deduce sth about the brokenness of human interactions? Did social API's evolve to similar clusterfucks of dead entropy we have to shovel in our brains to get along?

I think the answer is an emphatic yes. And you know what's even making it worse? Software. Y'know there are all these whining about the millenials, and I too have had my experiences with stuff of that category. Like back when we searched a new roommate for our flat, we needed three rounds because people who had said yes suddenly reconsidered. Similarly now when we tried to sell our couch: people tried to push the price. Said they were interested, never showed up at the appointed time. It's like they have been spoiled by Amazon: expecting to buy with one click, for the cheapest price and send back if they don't like. And that is not a generation thing. Those old blokes ranting on the young are just as bad. They are just as lost in antisocial media as anybody else. It's a general erosion of not sticking to civility and courtesy, to the yes or no once said, coz everything is now as flexible and fluid as the digital projections of ourselves transmitted round the globe, changing in realtime.

I fucking hate it. - I'm out like this stupid Tom Cruise character in Oblivion.

Comments
  • 1
    A good type system can fix this (not the human interaction stuff though)
  • 1
    Liquid times, indeed. Zygmunt bauman wrote about that.
  • 0
    @beegC0de Maybe mitigate, yes. As a guy who has to develop for Linux and Mac I kinda started to sympathize with the Unix Haters, or those lisp guys complaining on C++ which I use - this whole "worse is better" stuff - secretly knowing that probably their "right" thing can only stay that shiny because it's not that widely adopted, touched by tons of ab-users
  • 1
    @nanl or Vilém Flusser? Thanks for the pointer, I'm usually a bit reluctant with philosophers very recent, but I'll pick up a book of his (arm in cast giving some time to read)
  • 0
    @SanitizedOutput As you implied yourself, it was taking an anology backwards (software is like social interactoons etc.) Yeah, maybe some non sequitur's there, stretching stuff, jumping around. Of course there are psychologists or sociologists who can better express their discontent with digital induced changes, like Larry Rosen.
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    @phorkyas type script is pretty widely adopted, although I'm not sure how good the type system actually is. Rust is getting popular and it has a pretty nice type system. It's like having the benefits of contract metaprogramming without having to deal with it directly.
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