From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 00:45:44 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: His and Her Anarchies
In-Reply-To: <v03007802aead19eacee0@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <32883769.FB7@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Timothy C. May wrote:
> At 12:50 PM -0500 11/11/96, jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca wrote:
> >"Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
> >>Well, I think there clearly _is_ a gender gap on these sorts of issues.

> >Technologies that matter make daily life less obnoxious, and you can
> >leverage them all the time. The Net is going to start mattering in a
> >significant way when it relieves people of the burden of dealing with
> >the garbage inherent in the information flow of everyday life. The net
> >is going to matter when I can rely on

> Well, in the 23 years I've been on the Net in one way or another, I can
> honestly say it is _increased_ my exposure to garbage. The notion that
> computers are time-savers is fraught with problems. For some tasks, it
> clearly is.
> But for other tasks and situations, it's a time sink. I view it primarily
> as a communications mechanism, e.g., lists like this, the Web, news, etc.
> Your mileage may vary.
> Notions that computers will be widely accepted because of their
> "time-saving" powers I file right next to claims that computers will be
> useful for storing recipes and balancing checkbooks.

Huh?  Just this year, I wrote a letter to an insurance company about
some bozo who hit my car, and thought he'd get away with it.
The computer allowed me to keep re-editing the letter until it was
perfected, which task would have been not feasible or simply would not
have been done manually, for what should be obvious reasons.
I won my case, and the other guy is suffering those nasty payments...
I even beat the CHP on that one....

Three to four years ago, I used my computer to edit my cover letters and
resumes, to perfect them, to send out to hundreds of potential employers,
which resulted in my getting the exact job I wanted (which now pays very
well), in spite of the fact that I started looking in L.A. just when the
riots commenced, at the same time that tens of thousands of "technical"
people were laid off from various defense contractors.

Of course, I used my computers to perfect certain computer skills (for
which I never went to College) which landed me a whole series of nice
jobs from 1979 through 1992, but that doesn't count, right?

I hesitate to admit this, but the bottom line is that the computer is
a tool that can give one person an advantage over another, for which
messaging and communications is just incidental.  Since we are in fact
an animal predator (as humans), I don't think you have to have a whole
lot of imagination to understand where that goes...