Misha Verbitsky. Program against modernity

Program against modernity
Misha Verbytskyi

Publication date: February 9, 2004

Modernity consists in the consistent and steady replacement of the creative aspects of existence with mechanical ones.

There is such a computer hobby - retrocomputing: writing programs for museum computers or interpreters for such programs.

The art of programming has changed shape in the decades since its museum days. From a demiurge who controlled all aspects of the computer, the programmer became the author of the interface blocks between and around the library package. The changes that have occurred are akin to what befell the spiritualized medieval artisan who made, for example, barrels - his heir stands with an idiotic look at the conveyor belt and pours a plastic solution into the mold with a monotonous movement.

Retrocomputing is a rebellion against this ugly state of affairs, an attempt to return from the assembly line to the twilight of a medieval workshop.

But its significance is not limited to this. All functions necessary for the user can be implemented on a computer, which costs no more than a tape recorder or an iron; the social consequences of realizing this fact are much more important than the eternal dispute between supporters of different platforms.

The main problem of the modern world is one-way communications. All sorts of bastards sit on all sorts of television stations, publishing houses and magazines and broadcast all sorts of nasty things for money; and the population obediently eats this crap. As a result, both of them become idiots, incapable of communicating in any form except through one end of the microphone, from which disgusting nonsense comes out.

If information is distributed in a system only in one direction, it is approximately the same as if information is not distributed in the system at all. Suffering equally are the privileged (who are forced to broadcast idiotic nonsense to imaginary idiots, resulting in citizen journalists becoming about as stupid as their imaginary target audience) and the unprivileged (who, under the pressure of idiotic brainwashing, are forced to turn into idiots; because the field of communications completely filled with signs that insult the intellect).

The orientation of the public message towards the idiot is no secret. The media flaunts its own idiocy - I’m sure that the author of the advertising clip “Galina blanka, glug-glug, glug-glug. Galina blanka, glug-glug, glug-gul” laughed at his product no less than its many critics. The idiocy of the mass media reaches totality - Fomenko's show with stripping for money is replaced by Nagiyev's show about lesbian incest and bestiality among the Moscow middle class (both mother and daughter and the Doberman dog were recruited from the same course at the theater school and are frankly bored by the monotonous and idiotic scenario that has long been does not shock or even amuse anyone); and after this there is a parliamentary broadcast, where a deputy demonstrates karate movements, with the help of which he wants to deal with another deputy; another deputy, who had already received a boot in the face from the first deputy, is dragged away.

The totality of “idiotic text” in the media is ensured by two things: the incomparable media advantage of idiocy (idiotic advertising is remembered better than any other, idiotic TV shows have the highest ratings, and 80% of the electorate are ready to vote for a president with an IQ of less than 40) and the population’s growing tolerance for idiocy. The language of communication is made up of signs drawn from the media - little by little, idiotic advertising and idiotic situations are introduced into the collective consciousness as the norm. As a result, the population turns into a collective idiot, and the media are forced to choose more and more idiotic situations and signs. It is unknown in which circle of idiotic hell this spiral ends; but the movement along it goes exclusively in one direction - down. To a country where happy Teletubbies and rabbits sing songs about Galina blanca, glug-glug, glug-glug, and don’t see anything out of the ordinary in it; and yet another lop-eared, bug-eyed scion of the dynasty of American presidents is threatening a nuclear bomb to a country whose name he can neither write nor pronounce.

Mass media is the main danger to humanity; the danger is much more serious than AIDS, atomic weapons and terrorism combined. The danger is especially serious because there is no solution to the problem (except for weekly bomb attacks on the Ostankino TV tower and other sources of media signals).

The Internet, in theory, could correct this situation by replacing the media with a system of peer-to-peer communications. Instead of watching the news, everyone will read their friend’s feed on Livejournal; and instead of watching a soap opera... That's right! Read the Livejournal feed.

But the power of the media is not that everyone watches the box; The mass media also have power over those who do not look at the box - the mass media construct the signs of the language used for communication. And if the language is idiotic, then meaningful communication becomes completely impossible. If your alphabet consists of the words "Galina blanka" and "glug-glug, glug-glug", what can you say? Hardly anything other than “Galina blanka, glug-glug, glug-glug.” Meaningful communication in a community is possible only if the community is isolated from the media.

Therefore, it is necessary for EVERYONE to have the Internet. That is, about the same as radio and television now.

This, in principle, is easily feasible now - a computer capable of supporting TCP/IP and a small browser costs 40 bucks without a monitor and 70 with a monitor. Most people who spend $1500 on a box don't need anything else, and could get by with a hundred bucks and get a much better (and less glitchy) product.

The problem is that the proliferation of outdated computers will put a dent in the profits of software and hardware traders; and they resist this as best they can.

Mainly by writing disgustingly bloated new and new versions of operating systems and packages, each worse than the last; and remaking all standards to ones that are much worse and require monstrous computer resources.

Next comes network marketing - if your boss has switched to the fourteenth version of Message Word, which is incompatible with all previous ones, you have no choice but to upgrade.

All of these things are extremely harmful. Even if the new software is better than the old (which is possible, at least in theory), its use is unethical because it encourages the disgusting practice of writing new programs. If this process could be stopped at some point, the population would be closer to total computerization, with access to the Internet, and free from the dictatorship of the mass media, idiots, politicians, supporters of the market economy, the show Windows and Galina Blanca, glug-glug , glug-glug Galina blanka, glug-glug, glug-glug.

Software giants, mass media, politics, market economics, democracy are parts of one disgusting octopus, whose name is Modernity; an octopus that will destroy humanity or be destroyed.

From the point of view of the bastards who speak on behalf of the software giant , the situation looks completely different. The latest version of the already outrageously bloated software package has additional features compared to its predecessor. These features will be used by one user per hundred thousand; but every user needs something different - and the software giant gets money from everyone. A good example of this is the Unicode standard , consisting of all font tables, registered by the International Standards Organization. It is difficult to imagine a person who will need all fonts without exception; but this is not necessary - the standard is not written for anyone in particular, but in order to sell the most swollen software product to the maximum number of solvent bastards.

Of course, this standard turned out to be completely unsuitable for working with a large number of languages ​​(commercial giants did not create Unicode so that the Japanese, Chinese and other undeveloped nations would use it, but in order to impose another and completely unnecessary upgrade on everyone else). But even if by some miracle this standard were suitable, it still should not be used; for ethical reasons. Humanity does not need complex standards, but cheap and simple computers.

A computer should be simple and cheap, like an iron or a coffee maker; and computer literacy is universal, accessible, obligatory, like arithmetic and penmanship.

Including programming.

...Let the state be small and the population sparse. If [the state] has various weapons, there is no need to use them. Let people not go far [from their places] until the end of their lives. If there are boats and chariots [in the state], there is no need to use them. Even if there are warriors, there is no need to field them.

Let the people begin to weave knots again and use them instead of writing. Let his food be tasty, his clothes beautiful, his home comfortable, and his life joyful. Let neighboring states look at each other, listen to each other's roosters crowing and dogs barking, and people do not visit each other until old age and death.

- Tao Te Ching