100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born

Re:100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born by rbanffy on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @09:21AM (#39370055)

It’s kind of a side effect of capitalism. You get the culture of doing more with less and drive it until the point you are doing less than adequate with less money than you’d need to do it properly.

The end result is software that puts postal workers in jail and doors that fall off planes.

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Re:100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @10:42AM (#39371150)

Like democracy, it sucks, but it's all we have. Depending how you define capitalism (currency, trade, investing in capital?) and software (something executed on a digital or analog computing machine) there was no software 10,000+ years ago before capitalism

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Re:100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born by rbanffy on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @02:28PM (#39374048)

In the end it's about process and dumbing it down enough that it can be followed by the cheapest resource available (while also pressing down the cost of such resources through managed poverty). This race to the bottom is never good.

As for democracy, it's great, much better than any alternative. It's inconvenient (to the powers of the day), however, that it tries (at least the functional ones) to prevent the widening of the chasm between the haves and the have nots. One thing any functional democracy must aggressively prevent is the acquisition of power from any means other than popular vote.

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Re:100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born by CamperBob2 on Thursday February 15, 2024 @10:30AM (#39383847)

It's inconvenient (to the powers of the day), however, that it tries (at least the functional ones) to prevent the widening of the chasm between the haves and the have nots.

If there was a central lesson of the twentieth century, it's that the chasm between the haves and have-nots cannot be closed without doing more damage than simply allowing it to exist. People are not created equal, no matter how tightly you shut your eyes and how loudly you chant.

Meanwhile, the central lesson of the twenty-first century is beginning to come into focus: giving smart people and stupid people the same voting rights is maladaptive to civilized society. You can forget any notion of progress while this state of affairs prevails; just ask your local Trumpers. Does this refute democracy? Very well, then, it refutes democracy.

I'm not super optimistic on either front, I guess. Optimism simply requires too much denial. Preservation of equal opportunity is likely to be the best goal we can aim for.

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Re:100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born by rbanffy on Friday February 16, 2024 @03:34PM (#39402594)

> If there was a central lesson of the twentieth century, it's that the chasm between the haves and have-nots cannot be closed without doing more damage than simply allowing it to exist.

I don’t think there is evidence supporting this conclusion.

> People are not created equal, no matter how tightly you shut your eyes and how loudly you chant.

And yet they have equal rights, including the same right to influence political decisions, which is clearly not being respected.

> the same voting rights is maladaptive to civilized society.

Democracy requires an informed electorate. That’s why public schools exist and why they should be well (and equally well) funded, without some schools being privileged by donations that’ll only exacerbate unequal rights to education.

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Re:100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born by CamperBob2 on Sunday February 18, 2024 @03:09PM (#39422625)

Exactly, which is why the right is defunding and attacking public education with every fiber of their being.

There's a showstopping exploit in American representative democracy, and they finally found it. "I love the poorly-educated (... and I will work hard to increase their numbers.)"

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