Before the internet
came along, it was generally accepted that the only people who would use computers in their leisure time would be "enthusiasts". But with the dawn of computers
doing interesting things like sending smileys, showing pictures of naked people (I remember having to look at wire-frame naked people back in the eighties, you had to use your imagination, it wasn't all done for you)
and breaking news stories about cats, technology is no longer just the preserve
of the ginger bearded. People who watch operas even have a twiddle. But these non-techy
people wriggling their manicured toes in
the pond of technology still seem to intuitively understand one important technological
principle: computers are binary.
Trip Advisor
demonstrates this well. As of 20/11/2014, not one single review, all of which
use a scale of 1-5 stars to indicate your assessment of a service, has
been assigned a score other than five or one stars. Every
hotel and restaurant in the world is either embarrassingly perfect or
embarrassingly embarrassing. People are either cock thrustingly enamoured with
their pork chop or upset to the point where they push their plate aside, cut
off their own penis and demand the chef cook it medium-rare as a replacement.
It's not just Trip
Advisor that is blighted with this all or nothingness, the Daily Mail website
article comments section has equal binary spiting. Except in the Daily Mail you
only normally get one side of the argument and that side will invariably be the
one that supports the supposition that, "everything is shit and it's foreign people's fault and if you don't think that you're part of the PC brigade". Brigades are very bad things to Daily Mail readers. It would though, take
just one brave commenter to destroy the whole binary philosophy of
micro-computing. Type, "I can see both sides of this story," hit
"send" and we would have the next technological leap! Balanced
computing.
This can't happen of
course. Computing and that that sails on it are, and always will be, inherently
binary. Anybody stupid enough post a comment suggesting that both sides of an argument
could have merit would be castigated:
SteveFromLeeds
- 1 hour ago
Maybe
there's merit on both sides of the argument?
EnglandIsNotEnglishExPat
- 1 hour ago
How can
there be two sides to something? Only scitzo's think about two different things
at once. Does SteveFromLeeds have kids, does the council know he's a scitzo?
NonPCWhiteGuy
- 1 hour ago
I notice
with interest that SteveFromLeeds (if
that is his real name), makes no mention of whether he's black, Asian or
Chinese?.
The question of whether artificial intelligence could ever fully replace human intelligence is often talked about. Maybe this will happen not by computers thinking with nuance and consideration, but by humans continuing along the path of being definitely sure about everything, no matter how little they know about it. The average person has no more idea about whether there is too much immigration in the UK than what the colour of Chris Packham's living room walls are. In fact, if somebody asked me what the colour of Chris Packham's living room walls were, I would either tell them, "I don't know" or break into Chris Packham's house, I wouldn't just get angry and type in, "off-white".
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