General Discussion

My roll in the computer lab was the fool they kept around when they had to fool-proof some software. I was also the guy a harried teaching assistant could point to when someone needed basic help. Go ask him...

Now I'm pretty much a Luddite. DU is my only "social media." I block all the well known social media sites, including bluesky. They seem to be mostly noise to me and besides I don't want them tracking me. I block advertising aggressively too. I'll pay to make advertising go away on sites I visit frequently. If that's not an option, and they insist I turn off my advertising blockers, well, fuck them. I don't have to look at their site. I apply the same rule to television.

I was very late to get a cell phone, and that was mostly at my family's insistence. It's still flip phones ( like Star Trek! ) that I use for phone calls, texts, and sometimes as a camera. The camera is hardly any better than the cheap disposable film cameras I used to keep on hand, believing that the best camera to have in an unexpected situation is the one you've got. I rarely carry expensive cameras for casual use because I'm very good at loosing or breaking things or having them stolen.

My favorite computer is still the Atari 800 series. Computers and networks were simple enough then that one person could understand them in their entirety, both hardware and software.

The internet is very similar to the early days of radio, it can be used for good or evil. On one side of the Atlantic you had FDR and his fireside chats, on the other side you had Hitler.