At any rate... 1984 (and Animal Farm) are definitely going on the list.
[Oh no, here he goes again... well at least he's not talking about
Infinite Jest again!] Don't you remember what Winston Smith did for a
living?
I am completely sickened by the concept of editing history. For me, the
associations with fascism are so obvious. And child abuse as well. Why
so serious? Probably because I believe that there is a very strong link
between accountability and the immutability of the past. Need I spell
this out? If so, I will do so from home where my Primo Levi books are.
Furthermore, once you start altering the historical record, you threaten
the consistency of that record. If you post something and I respond to
it, and then you retract your posting, you alter the context of my
response in a way that may make my response look irrelevant. Then what,
do I have to retract or edit my response? And how about those messages
triggered by mine? A naïve retract could wipe out most of the remaining
posts in the archive.
If you're just concerned about wasting other's time on a post that you
immediately realize to be stupid/bogus/wrong, then just follow your post
with an empty post with a subject line like
Subject: Ignore my last post <eom> [was: Re: Samples & Steve Jobs. ]
(That's the internal Microsoft convention, at least.)
But in the case described below - where you misunderstood Tim and didn't
realize it until he replied - I just totally disagree with retracting
your post and his reply. What if other people misunderstood Tim's
original post the same way you did? You would then nuke Tim's clarifying
post just because *you* ... oh what the hell, I really have to go back
to work.
Perhaps I should just say: Adam! You aren't perfect! None of us are! We
all make mistakes! Get used to it! The solution is NOT to pretend that
the mistakes didn't happen!
- Joe
Joseph S. Barrera III <joebar@microsoft.com>
<http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar/>
Phone, Office: (415) 778-8227; Cellular: (415) 601-3719; Home: (415)
588-4801
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views and do
not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.
-----Original Message-----
From: I Find Karma [SMTP:adam@cs.caltech.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 1997 5:04 PM
To: FoRK@pest.w3.org
Subject: Samples & Steve Jobs.
tbyars@earthlink.net writes:
> no, you missed my point completely. I said I liked the way
they did it and
> thought that was clever. What I said was, the problem with
sampling is that
> it takes a carbon copy of something and places it somewhere
else. And that
> you might have memories, or emotions tied to the original
that are
> corrupted by the remake.
>
> THAT was my point in brief.
Oh, okay. I see.
See, this gets back to why I want to remove old and wrong bits
from the
past. Sure pickling every bit whether old or wrong makes for a
good
"bit scrapbook." But leaving all the bits "out there", so that
every
time someone visits the moments from my past where I'm a
complete moron,
is bad, because it's evocative in the wrong way: it evokes bad
memories
tied to those original bits. Memories should be allowed to
exist free
from association... (gosh, I can feel the avalanche of criticism
fomenting... :). Otherwise, whenever someone drudges up those
old bits
(or as Tim points out, any time anyone drudges up anything
*evocative* of
those old bits), we the Pavlovian slobbering fools that we are,
associate
those bits instantly with certain memories. I, for one, could
do with
less drooling in my life.
In an unrelated note, someone here was askin' me about Steve
Jobs
biographies, but I forget who. Anyway, Rohit recommends two:
1. Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward by Jeffrey S. Young.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0673188647/forkrecommendedrA/
2. Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing by Randall E. Stross.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0689121350/forkrecommendedrA/
Either/both are classified as "hard to find" by Amazon, which
makes me
wonder if Jobs bought up all the spare copies to perpetuate his
reality
distortion field.
Anyway, I linked to both from the FoRK Recommended Books list...
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/local/fork-books.html
Also, Apple Employee #12 says "Say hello to FoRK." Okay.
Hello, FoRK.
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
I kind of like the idea of a universal Hansard. Every nuance,
every bit,
right or wrong, spoken in passion or from reason, drunk or
sober,
trapped. Caught. Frozen. Pickled. Searchable. Archivable. Part
of the
historical record. Your corrections can come later. And they'll
get
trapped and pickled too. But I think having the original
verbatim of
everything is a neat and useful thing. Damned dangerous too, I
admit,
but hey, so's driving at 85mph, right?
-- Ron Resnick
[Ed: Driving at 85mph with Rohit would be a *luxury*. Luckily,
most
modern cars kick the engine off automatically at 107mph... :]