by lm

The typical story of technology is one of progress; your floppies get old and decrepit and you can’t see your old data, that’s basically your fault, and who wants to live in the past? But human networks often stick around for decades, half-centuries. People have been working on Smalltalk for more than 40 years, for as long as I have been alive. Just continually thinking about it, how to improve it, how to make it popular, how to get the world to acknowledge it. It binds them together. I respect that.

A tremendous part of daily life regards the exchange of technologies. We are good at it. It’s so simple as to be invisible. Can I borrow your scissors? Do you want tickets? I know guacamole is extra. The world of technology isn’t separate from regular life. It’s made to seem that way because of, well…capitalism. Tribal dynamics. Territoriality. Because there is a need to sell technology, to package it, to recoup the terrible investment. So it becomes this thing that is separate from culture. A product.