c60a-1bq@web-1f.berkeley.edu (09/09/88)
I think I'm on some king of anti-Timothy Leary kick, so here goes: In the latest Verbum (I don't have it, too expensive) Leary praises the Amiga (much deserved, and I own an ST). Then he goes on to praise it for its _low_price_, saying that a kid in the ghetto (yes, in the ghetto) could get one, and plug into all that good computer stuff. I don't know about you, but since when is $600+ (a 500 with no monitor but some software) affordable? I'm middle class, but a computer would end up a significant investment if I wanted to make it useful (sw, disks, time, and communication). BTW, I believe Leary was quoted; not writing the article. John Kawakami
cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (09/10/88)
In article <14033@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, c60a-1bq@web-1f.berkeley.edu writes: > I think I'm on some king of anti-Timothy Leary kick, so here goes: > > In the latest Verbum (I don't have it, too expensive) Leary praises > the Amiga (much deserved, and I own an ST). Then he goes on to praise > it for its _low_price_, saying that a kid in the ghetto (yes, in the > ghetto) could get one, and plug into all that good computer stuff. > > I don't know about you, but since when is $600+ (a 500 with no monitor > but some software) affordable? I'm middle class, but a computer would > end up a significant investment if I wanted to make it useful (sw, disks, > time, and communication). > > John Kawakami Simple. Take your day's profits from selling crack, and go to the Amiga store! Big :-) of course. More likely, someone saves up for a year or two from a paper route, buys an Amiga, and it gets stolen the next day by someone who sells it for $30 so they can go buy some crack. Timothy Leary is one of those walking, talking reminders that LSD is not a good thing to do to your brain. Clayton E. Cramer
erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) (09/11/88)
In article <14033@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, c60a-1bq@web-1f.berkeley.edu writes: > I think I'm on some king of anti-Timothy Leary kick, so here goes: I'm not a "defender", today, so no wars. :-) > In the latest Verbum (I don't have it, too expensive) Leary praises > the Amiga (much deserved, and I own an ST). Then he goes on to praise > it for its _low_price_, saying that a kid in the ghetto (yes, in the > ghetto) could get one, and plug into all that good computer stuff. > I don't know about you, but since when is $600+ (a 500 with no monitor > but some software) affordable? I'm middle class, but a computer would > end up a significant investment if I wanted to make it useful (sw, disks, > time, and communication). $600 is about what we paid for my first computer -- a C64, 1541 and printer; when I was a upper-lower class kid living in the backwoods of BFE, Leesville, Louisiana. (Ft. Polk sux too. :-). We weren't on welfare, but we weren't rich either. I think we saved about 9-12months for the computer. (Grandparents bought me a monitor a month later. What a rescue. :-). That computer made the difference between me being a dual major CompSci/Journalism student in Houston instead of being like my cousins: 2-4 kids, HS diploma at best, slow paying job, no future, and living in BFE, Louisiana. I think the "little kid in the gheto" was a bit of an exaggeration.. I think the price of a used C64 system, a used Atari800 or any other 8bit micro, and the availability of cheap software make possible a chance for a lot of kids to be educated and exposed to the world in some small fasion. Maybe they'll flip past "Loading Games On Your Banana PC5000" to "Learning Basic". Remember also that Leary's big kick now *is* computers -- I read an interview where he said this is what he thought LSD-25 *would* be. He states, and I have little reason to challenge him, that the average 5 year old now understands more about the world than Marco Polo did at his death (*)-- thanks to TV. What could our kids learn from computers? Better yet, what could we *teach* our children with computers. When I was 14 or 15, I played a stock-market/business simulator and learned more than I ever did in an economics class in high school. Likewise with a "motion/physics display program" and basic physics. Psychology and self-exploration is wide open. (Play "Mind Mirror" for an afternoon, and see what you can learn as an adult.) (*) -- not that the child has the *maturity* of Marco Polo, but that they understand concepts like: the world is round, there is a country far away where the people speak a different language and there are animals called kangaroos; the Earth goes around the Sun in big circles; the child can read and write on a limited level; the child may be starting to be bilingual (especially here in Houston :-); etc. I doubt that the child is more *intelligent* than Marco Polo, just more *exposed* to the world. -- Skate Unix. J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007 ..!bellcore!tness1!/
eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) (09/13/88)
In article <319@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) writes: >He [Leary] states, and I have little reason to challenge him, that the average >5 year old now understands more about the world than Marco Polo did >at his death (*)-- thanks to TV. I would go much further than that, eric. I would say that today, thanks to TV, the average 5 year old understands more about the world than Timothy Leary. -- This message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands and perhaps millions billions trillions maybe even zillions of dollars to send everywhere.
c60a-1bq@e260-4g.berkeley.edu (nunnayourbiznezz) (09/13/88)
No doubt that computers are useful, but until they fall to at most $400 ($250, the price of a tV or stereo would be good0, they will not become truly populist. I expect this goal in a few years with some PClone systems. As someone who has benifitted from micros (and knowing how to program them), I only wish this price drop would come sooner. Until joe/jane average needs a computer, she will not get one. (By need, i mean percieve a need. i.e. we need TVs, radios, and microwaves) As for Leary, he did say "ghetto." That was no exaggeration. Maybe he's been seeing too many reciepts from his recent speaking tour. Still, $600 is a lot of money. If a computer purchase has to be planned for 9+ months, it is not as affordable as it should be. John Kawakami
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (09/13/88)
In article <14185@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, c60a-1bq@e260-4g.berkeley.edu (nunnayourbiznezz) writes: > No doubt that computers are useful, but until they fall to at most $400 ($250, > the price of a tV or stereo would be good0, they will not become truly > populist. They have. I bought my second Atari 800 (an 800XL) for $64. The newer 800s are a bit more expensive but they're still in the $100 range. Commodore makes small computers in the same price range, too. Yes, they're not big machines. They have no hard drive and only 64K of RAM. But they're quite affordable... in the price range of telephones. PC clones, if you're willing to put up with a mono adapter and display, are in the high $400s. If you get a deal on a used Amiga 1000 you can get a mono system (or TV output) in the same range. Watch for the price of the 1000 to fall again when the new graphics chips come out. The Amiga is definitely out of the range of most middle/low income kids, let alone truly poor people. But its little brother (the Atari 800) isn't. (I can't see a middle-class kid being well served with anything less than an Amiga, though. It's not as good as a Mac-II or a 25 MHz 80386 box with a targa board, but it's better than anything under $5000.) -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today?
shea@bnrmtv.UUCP (Ray Shea) (09/16/88)
In article <3623@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes: > > I would go much further than that, eric. I would say that today, thanks > to TV, the average 5 year old understands more about the world than > Timothy Leary. You mean because they know who the Masters of the Universe are, while Leary is still trying to figure it out?
jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (Jonathan Krueger) (09/17/88)
In article <319@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) writes: >[Leary] states, and I have little reason to challenge him, that the average >5 year old now understands more about the world than Marco Polo did >at his death (*)-- thanks to TV. >(*) -- not that the child has the *maturity* of Marco Polo, but that >he understands concepts like: the world is round, there is a country >far away where the people speak a different language and there >are animals called kangaroos; the Earth goes around the Sun in big >circles; the child can read and write on a limited level; the child >may be starting to be bilingual (especially here in Houston :-); etc. >I doubt that the child is more *intelligent* than Marco Polo, just more >*exposed* to the world. Marco Polo wrote an account of his travels. It has been available in English translation for years. It's hard to imagine what impediment could have kept Leary from it. It's even harder to imagine a shortage of five year olds that obstructed him in his work. So his statement comparing the two certainly provides us an opportunity to form an opinion of the man, and of his intellectual labors and contributions. It's possible that Leary was unaware of Polo's account, that he didn't bother to look for it, hasn't read it, and had little other basis from which to make any comparison. It's also possible that he hasn't spent much time with five year olds lately. Or perhaps he has modest experience with either or both, could tell the difference between them in good light but you wouldn't hire him to babysit the one or proofread the other. Finally, he may have examined the available evidence and then drawn his conclusions against it. From these we may infer Leary's methods and personal standards with some accuracy. In the first and second cases, we may merely find him a shoddy researcher, with little intent to do the work and get the facts. He's intellectually lazy, and perhaps dishonest, but is that a great crime, or uncommon? Surely we could say the same of Marx and Freud, both of whom considered themselves scientists and searchers after objective truth. In the third case, it may be simply that he's prone to speak as an authority on matters about which he's no better informed than his audience. He's a practicing dilettante, and preaches what he practices. Again, how can we condemn him and remain silent about the vast majority of usenet traffic? In the last case, we are constrained to one of two inferences: either he's incompetent or deceptive, the same motivations we used to attribute to then-President Nixon. Incompetence could assume two forms: he's generally unable to consider difficult questions and make good judgements, or he's specifically unfamiliar with what constitutes knowledge of the world, he himself lacks it and is thus ill equipped to measure it in others. In either form, he can't assess and compare it, but honestly thinks he can. By contrast if we assume he's quite capable of it, we may conclude he intends to make a point, by deceptive means if convenient. In short, he's either a fool or a liar; either he's no judge or a dishonest one. Surveying all the possibilities that are consistent with the facts, he hardly emerges as a valuable source of information or insights. It doesn't matter whether he's aware of how his conclusions might contradict the facts and each other, that is, whether he's a conscious fraud. Either way, it's hardly what might qualify him to tell us how to think clearly and act wisely, let alone how to gain deep insight into self and the universe. He seems more suited to providing facile analyses making use of facts which he hasn't checked, and which he knows we're unlikely to check. His conclusions might still be valid, but it's not likely. For instance, he seems to consider TV a rich source of reliable knowledge that increases the viewer's understanding of the world. -- Jon -- Jonathan Krueger uunet!daitc!jkrueger jkrueger@daitc.arpa (703) 998-4777 Inspected by: No. 15