"Day Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bob George wrote: > > [...] > > Note the emphasis on HISTORY's most important advances, not OS or > > computers. This contradicts, and in fact makes a mockery of the > > assertion that we're in an "era of diminishing returns." > Diminishing returns are not no returns. which I think was his point.
YOU are making the case that there are only diminishing returns in recent years. The author makes quite the opposite point, stating that one of HISTORY's most important advances (the Internet) has evolved since you argue things started going downhill. > Whether we in the western cultures have portables that can do all > things at all times from all places will prolly have less impact > than when the other 5 billion on this planet have access to just > a fixed platform with reasonably convenient access. Why is there this insistence that the other 5 billion have to do with less? The efforts in India I cited are a prime example that other peoples are no less desirable of technological capabilities than we westerners are. And the high-tech gadgets they're working on will run far more efficiently than the AC-powered hand-me-down clunkers you have in mind for them. > And whether we can manipulate full motion graphics will be less > important than whether the other 5 billion can have access to > un-censored information in plain text just like this. You do realize not everyone uses ASCII character sets, right? How useful is your XT going to be in say, China where a good chunk of those other 5 billion happen to live? Or are we back to the "they can learn English" again? > As Howard pointed out, it was one thing for a zealot to > start a riot in a beer hall, and quite another for him to > rile up a whole nation and start a financial panic. He will > not need anything more than ascii access to do that if he > has the skill to spin a tale well. Howard actually made quite the opposite point. The "riot in a beer hall" certainly wasn't incited by clever use of the pen, but by "rich content" delivery, HEAVILY dependent on visuals and audio. Howard's point in the article was that ADVANCES in technology will make the modern equivalent of the putsch much more far-reaching. There's "productivity" for you! > So on the one hand, the technological advances are increasingly > trivial, while the sociological impact is rather like the > Chinese glyph for 'danger' which includes that of 'opportunity'. Oh yeah. How's that spelled in ASCII anyhow? You may think the ability to display non-English characters is trivial, but I suspect many don't. > The impact of a SURVPC level platform being globally ubiquitous > is an increasingly dangerous, but also, a liberating opportunity. And the ready availability of modern platforms globally are much more so. We're not talking about Windows 98 on every table, but rather low-power, low-resource systems that delivery the full range of capabilities of modern devices. You don't like graphics or audio, but many do. They want it, and they're working on ways to get it to their peoples cheaply and without limitations. - Bob To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
