laura (05/15/82)
Who gets to define addiciton? I read more than 8 books a week on average and would read more if I had more time. Am I addicted? Obviously if I had been born into an underdeveloped country where illiteracy was the norm, I would probably not have the opportunity to learn to read, yet I doubt that anyone is likely to pity me for "being exposed to <something> particularily enticing". If that something is reading, of course, for reading is accepted by authorities as good and fine, but, due to the high profile which "computerphobia" has received, the divorce cases based on cyberphilia and the 24-hour-a-day hack are extolled as representative pictures of "how computerization is ruining our lives." (Of course, with figures claiming that 80% of Americans <and I doubt that Canadians are any better> do not read one new book in a year -- and a large fraction of the rest reading only *Jaws -- the Book based on the Motion Picture* and its ilk, perhaps reading will soon come under the critic's glare as being a strange and unusual pasttime!) Is it that there is something inherantly wrong in exposing people to something which can give them the thrill of "writing a particularily good piece of code?" -- or is it merely that computers are new, and therefore target for all sorts of attacks by those who resist change. There are a good many marriages which end in divorce for some reason. The fact that computers have been blamed for marriage failures does not necesarily mean that the computer *is* to blame. Perhaps joe-24-hour-hack received more gratification from his computer keyboard than from his wife - must the computer be to blame because wives are not a new phenonemon? The problem with defining an addiciton is that one must make a value judgement on the behavior of other people. Whether anyone has the right to interfere with my descision to run my life according to my own principles, reguardless of how they correspond to that of society as a whole, is a very good topic for discussion. Having faced opposition from those convinced that it was their duty to extract me from the science fields altogether -- (but dear, its such an unfeminine thing to do-oo!), I tend to sympathize with the "computer addict". As long as he is not spending his time breaking into a database and stealing money, or information, I would rather to leave him alone. Only 100 years ago I probably would have been sent into an asylum for my strange tendancies - this may account for my tolerance of the situation as it stands now. The more interference one does "for the good of the interfered", the closer one comes to the sad day when one is forced to watch television, attend sporting events, and drink beer because it is the North American norm. If I chose to watch no television and attend no sporting events, go to the ballet and the opera, and drink Benedictine instead of beer, I now run the risk of being called a snob (*sigh*) -- but who has claimed that it is a detrimental addiciton? Is a computer addiciton any worse? Perhaps computerphilia is merely another item in the anti-computer myth. laura creighton decvax!utzoo!laura
trb (05/19/82)
Cecil B. DeMillisecond is proud to present * * * * * * * * * * * HACKER MADNESS! * * * * * * * * * * * See depraved hackers pounding away at their keyboards as their girlfriends look on panicstricken. (Faster, FASTER!) See burnt out hackers in their fluorescent lit lairs gently caressing mice. They must be stopped! TELL YOUR CHILDREN! Midnight shows at a theater near you. Andy Tannenbaum Bell Labs Whippany, NJ (201) 386-6491