[Sussex] Improving on UNIX

[Nik Butler]

> The question of development is worth
> challenging.
> 
> To claim that, say, the use of a
> non-alphabetical language restricted
> development prior to the late middle
> ages sadly doesn't stack up. Many
> technological and cultural advances were
> first made in Asia - the classic example
> would be the development of gunpowder in
> China.
Ahh but here your arguement has moved from Ideological representation of
methods and ideas to implementation of methods and articualtion.

> It is true that languages based on
> ideomatograms were slower to develop in
> recent centuries. However one could
> claim that this was because, with the
> advent of movable type, the technology
> placed such restricitions on the
> mass-production of the written word.
or maybe that like say Mandarin, the pictogram requires a full rfc for
any new concept. which makes building a new concept pictogram require
the user to establish foundations in previously established ideas.
Meanwhile if I use Frecnh, English or Navaho I can establish a word
through definition of context.

> Technology has advanced to the extent
> that it can mass-communicate content
> based on more than plain text. Pictures,
> sounds, movement, and so on. Much
> research on communication has shown that
> the _average_ human is capable of both
> processing and conveying information at
> a rate much higher than that at which
> they can process the written word. I am
> not convinced of the claim that because
> something has proved to be an advantage
> for 300 of the last 5000 years that it
> will always be an advantage simply
> because those 300 are the most recent.
yes we can process the data in pictures but we actually slow down
communication to establish dialog of ideas.. but lets try a experiment.

if I start with drawing a idea to express that 1 is actually a odd
number how might we start to establish this ?

> > Languages are the stong foundation for

> 
> Languages likewise only REPRESENT ideas.
> The concept, say, of "democracy" means
> something very different to us to the
> average inhabitant of the German
> Democratic Republic in the 1980s, or
> even to a republican (in the sense of
> the movement, not the party) American,
> who would consider the UK to be a
> fundamentally less democratic country
> than the US, because we do not have an
> elected head of state. This is equally
> true whether I type "D, e, m, o, c, r,
> a, c and y" on the keyboard, or click a
> symblic representation. There are whole
> branches of linguistics devoted to
> this - axiomatic semantics would be a
> good place to start.

ahh dont confuse the definition with the context.


> place for the highly literate and
> self-motivated technocrat who is keen to
> develop new skills. However, I also have
> a place for the relatively basically
> trained IT support person who does not
> have the ability or inclination to learn
> arcane commands, but knows that he has
> to click the button that looks like a
> fat B to make text bold and is happy to
> repeat this to end-users ad nauseam.
> This person will cost me a lot less! Why
> should I pay for an expensive
> command-line understanding sysadmin when
> I can have a cheap one who can drive a
> GUI.
because your mixing work requirements and we are discussing system
admins  <grin>

> GUIs were not developed in some way to
> prevent understanding. They were
> developed to improve productivity. It is
> not at all clear to me why a tool that
> has clearly demonstrated mass
> productivity improvements in non-IT
> people should somehow prove to be
> incapable of delivering such things in
> IT people.

because an adult does not use a Tomy Calculator to carry out daily
financial equations ?

GUIs control the developer before the user. Guis restrict the idea from
its implementation.. which is why we keep evolving more ways to scroll
down a page. Meanwhile less is less ( more or less ) less does what it
needed to do.



> 
> Regards,
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Sussex mailing list
> Sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk
> http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sussex

-- 
nik at wired4life.org	http://www.wired4life.org/	Wired4Life, an Answer.

apt-get upgrade life++
	life++ is already upto date