While the weather in July was hot, the weather in August in Michigan this year has been glorious.
Computing Is Art
I’ve read two articles this week that make the case for treating Computer Science as something other than Computer Science. The one, titled, Why Computing Belongs With The Social Sciences, argues that we will not gain more ethical computing from college curricula that have “Computing Ethics” classes but only by moving Computing in to the Social Sciences. The author points to the increasing relationship between algorithms and power.
Recommendation algorithms, automated sanctioning systems, reactive violation detection and prediction systems, and nudge architectures are replacing the human agency built into our legal and political systems with an architecture of unknowable black boxes allowing the one-way surveil and control of people without any corresponding contestation
In an essay titled Hackers and Painters, Paul Graham notes that while he graduated with a Computer Science degree, he self identifies as a hacker, which is the likely image most people have of one who holds a CompSci degree. Graham says that hackers are like painters and writers because they make things. The following is for me the most important quote in the essay.
Empathy is probably the single most important difference between a good hacker and a great one. Some hackers are quite smart, but when it comes to empathy are practically solipsists. It’s hard for such people to design great software [5], because they can’t see things from the user’s point of view
Both articles resonate strongly with me. I graduated in 1989 with a Computer Science degree and have been working in the Information Technology industry for more than thirty years and I can say that I have never used any of the specifics of my computer science classes save for one, one Software Engineering. I also got a minor in secondary education and what gained from that part of my college learning I applied frequently throughout my career.
In my experience computing is more art than a science and more about humans than machines and yet neither of these realities were part of my formal computer science education. Granted, much time has passed since I graced the college classrooms so I know curricula has changed, but yet given the “market” pressures on colleges I suspect the most focus on producing employable graduates, with life long skills a secondary benefit rather than primary focus.
I received the case for the PIxel 4a that I ordered from Google, but no shipment notification yet for the phone. The case does confirm that the 4a is just a little taller than the Pixel 2.
I postulate that a consequence of the pandemic is an increase in the amount of garbage added to land fills. During my morning walks on garbage day I have observed that my neighbors have been doing a lot of house cleaning, so I bet it’s not a good time to be a garbage collector. #randomthought
Forgot the strangest part about tonight’s seven inning, pandemic doubleheader, which is that the Cubs are the road team at Wrigley in game two.
Last year, about Chicago Cubs, I wrote:
The problem is not the hitting, although they could be more consistent. To me the problem is the bullpen, they are giving up too many runs in the 6 thru 9th innings. Nobody in the pen is reliable.
I could not imagine that at the same time a year later the Cubs would be playing under such strange circumstances like they will today, playing two seven inning games in a “pandemic” double-header. Yet, while the Cubs have the best record, the bullpen performance has not been much different.
The Chicago Cubs have now lost three games in a row. Normally that would not be a problem, but in a short season, it feels like they really need to win at least one game today against the Cardinals. Preferably win both.
It seems to me that comparing something that is intended to create a new category of device against current categories is flawed. My read of this take on the Microsoft Surface Duo is that it is designed for productivity, smartphones are not designed for productivity, but we will compare it to smartphones anyway.
In my opinion, the real problem with the Surface Duo is its price. Anything that requires one to spend >$1,000 demands more discretion. Right now the price is a barrier to entry that is going to prevent Microsoft from selling many units.
Currently reading: Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation 📚
Finished reading: That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart 📚
Finished reading: The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg 📚
Finished reading: So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo 📚
“As a society, we are in danger of needing larger and larger social wake-up calls and shocks to the system. At a socio-global scale, this translates into more strident demagogues, more desperate and deeply fundamentalist takeovers, massive cultural disruption and human displacement, more vicious, faceless wars, and literally larger openings in the earth to swallow us up.”
— Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation by angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod Owens, et al.
Trump was impeached for doing what he is basically trying to do right now by disrupting the USPS. Republicans in the Senate had their chance to live their patriotic claims but failed to have the courage actually do it save for Mitt Romney.
“The tests, which can be produced for less than a dollar, can be performed by consumers each day or every other day. Though not as accurate as current diagnostic tests, they are nonetheless effective at detecting virus when a person is most infectious”
In a blog post today Om Malik asks, What is work? and I think he touches on a root cause of Trumpism. Basically, many people have a hard time seeing a future in which they have a good paying job and nobody seems to have an answer. Democrats are supposed to support labor via union representation, but instead appears to be in bed with corporations and the wealthy as much as Republicans. The traditional Republican Party has no better answers, leaving a vacuum that allows for the scapegoating that Trump promotes.
Except, scapegoating is itself a misdirection no different than anyone else because it puts focus on China and not on the corporations that use Chinese labor. Pick up anything and you will likely find a “made in China” sticker, but is that the fault of China or the “American” company who sell the product? And what if American’s hunt for the bargain that pushes change companies toward low cost labor so they can maintain profit margins?
“Personhood as such, in fact, is not a condition possible for an isolated substance. It is an act, not a thing, and it is achieved only in and through a history of relations with others. We are finite beings in a state of becoming, and in us there is nothing that is not action, dynamism, an emergence into a fuller (or a retreat into a more impoverished) existence.”
— That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart
I am not this clever, but how is my dad vacation shirt? #staycation
Transport #mbaug
Normally we take a trip somewhere to celebrate our wedding anniversary but this year we decided that staying home is the right thing to do. We did take a road trip to our favorite pie store to bring home and we got takeout from a nice restaurant. I did miss the fun that we had last year, but it’s better being together in our house that apart win one of us in a hospital.