Highly Urbanized Computing

How Windows XP is not unlike our big cities.

October 10, 2005

1968: The Start of the Technological Revolution: When did the tech revolution really start?

Affordable Rural Broadband: Some high speed access is out in the country, but it's expensive.

All Hand Coded: I enjoy coding things myself despite all the extra work it creates.

Am I Old Fashioned? Thoughts on Change: Andrew writes about his thoughts on a changing world.

As A Computer Programmer: One of a series of essays on different carrer options and what they entail.

Bureaucracies Have Political Cultures: Despite the image of apolitical life in bureaucracy, the people who make government work are often very political.

Bureaucracy: It's Problems: The reality of bureaucratic thought in our society.

Canned Reality: A discussion of video games, and television, and their effects on society.

Criticizing Technological Rationality: A careful analyisis of role of technology and bureaucratic rationality on the world around us.

DTV: Time To Get Rid of Your TV?: They won't work next year, so recycle 'em, and look to other sources of news.

Email and Spam: Many of us just get too much useless information but at least we don't have to dispose of it.

Hudson Valley Not Tech Valley: Our future is in diversity, not technology.

In a Computerized World: Are We Humans Anymore?: Andrew asks if in a computer dominated world, if being a person means anything anymore.

Malta's Reality: Far from being a great tech center, it shows the freedom of rural life.

Nation of Managers: Management is not a solution to our problems.

Post-Modernity: Five areas of study that allow us to see beyond the limits of science and technology.

Running out of Freedom: It sometimes seems like that I've seen everything locally (eventhough I haven't), and that finding cgreener pastures is getting harder.

Simplicity: For the Web, For the World: Simple webpages present information quickly. A simple world makes sure we get that infomation.

Tech Valley Realities: High Tech in Albany won't just give us jobs, it will also change cultures and increase sprawl.

The Endless Freedom Assault of our Technocratic Society: How somehow our fixes to our problems may actually make things worst.

The Parthenon: Technology and Politics: Reviewing the relationship between technology, politics, and a greater society.

The Story of the Non-Programmer: Sometimes thinking about who you have been, can take the stress off a rough day, and the bad memories that a class may bring back.

Tired of Computers? I Don't Think I'm Alone.: After a long semister of dealing with them, and doing lots of school work, he's just plain tired...

Webpages: Keep 'em Simple: We need to have simple webpages that load quickly.

Wireless Internet: Free hotspots make it possible for us to access high speed internet without cost.

Highly Urbanized Computing

What does Microsoft Windows and the big city have in common? Lots. Microsoft Windows is used by something like 95% of the worlds computers, with only a few people choosing to use Mac OS or Linux. Similiarly, something like 95% of the world lives in urbanized areas while relatively few of us prefer to live closer to the land.

Windows is a place where virsuses, spyware, and automation threaten every part of your livelyhood. Similiarly, in our big cities we got muggers, theives, and government that thinks they know what is best for us all. Of all those things, a system that seems to know what is best for you may be the worst. Too often that trait and shared by government and those massed produced computers running windows.

On the other hand, we got Linux. Linux is a system where the user is very much in control, particularly if you use a distrobution such as Debian. Nobody forces you to run any particular window manager, use any toolkit, or any specfic piece of software. Rural America is similiar to that. You live in a word that largely contrains you only by the physical limitations of yourself and the land around you.

Some of the problems with Windows is caused by the massive corporate system that created it. Much of the same can be said about the governance of our big cities. Big insitutions tend to create massiver products that are glued together by complex systems. Linux has fewer people putting it together, and they are far more diverse and less connected, so there isn't the complexity or troublesome bundling of software.

Except in the case of nuclear war, it is extremely unlikely that the big city will ever go away. Likewise, it's unlikely that mass-produced Microsoft Windows or the alike will disappear to the vastly superior and easier to use Linux. Yet, for those of us who know the secret of these little places and how to live in them, they will be better people.