Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> (02/13/90)
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1038. Monday, 12 Feb 1990. (1) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 90 16:36:00 EST (16 lines) From: "Vicky A. Walsh" <IMD7VAW@OAC.UCLA.EDU> Subject: Re: 3.1020 ideal workstations (85) (2) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 90 21:12:06 EST (25 lines) From: "Steven J. DeRose" <IR400011@BROWNVM> Subject: Workstations and portability (3) Date: 12 February 1990 (20 lines) From: Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: Perfect Workstation Blues (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 10 Feb 90 16:36:00 EST From: "Vicky A. Walsh" <IMD7VAW@OAC.UCLA.EDU> Subject: Re: 3.1020 ideal workstations (85) I don't believe there is, or necessarily should be, an IDEAL workstation for everyone. Even if a machine could be produced to do everything (well?) would any one of us need all of it? The thing to do is assess what YOU do and therefore what you need and then see which software does it and only then which hardware platform supports it. Your ideal machine is not my ideal machine and perhaps what is more necessary is the ability to move things between lots of different machines (some of which can be done now). Also, perhaps the ideal to strive for is the ideal system/network/workspace that allows easy access to all the pieces many Humanists have mentioned; you don't need to 'own' all these things on your machine. Vicky Walsh UCLA Humanities Computing (2) --------------------------------------------------------------33---- Date: Sun, 11 Feb 90 21:12:06 EST From: "Steven J. DeRose" <IR400011@BROWNVM> Subject: Workstations and portability 2 notes: I suspect that however far we progress, the "ideal workstation" will simply be a computer with speed, storage, display, and software about 3 times better than we have. It was not long ago at all that the "ultimate scholar's workstation" was thought to be the "3M": 1 Meg RAM, 1 Meg pixels (1024*1024, or a little larger than the "2 page" display now fairly common), and 1 Meg instructions per second (e.g., half a Mac II). I'm puzzled by the side discussion of "portability" of data, wherein the examples cited as wonderful have been single programs that run on several machines, such as WordPerfect. I'd call that software marketing, not portability. Portability is when I can use the file you send me even if I *don't* have WordPerfect (I don't) or "nifty word processor X". It is standardization of *data* that matters, not of software, nor even of how the data looks on with screen/printer/font/layout/etc. Insert positive rumblings about SGML and TEI here. Steve (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 February 1990 From: Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: Perfect Workstation Blues To the extent that the Perfect Workstation Blues cause us to think clearly about what it is that we do, then I'm certainly in favour of a long discussion. Faster, ok, but why? Big storage space, ditto. Multitasking the same. Functions we don't even have a name for. Why? What are we after? Answers of the form "so I can download files, write my essay, and calculate my grades all at the same time" are really not very helpful, even though they may be true. I like to think of Hephaestus and Daedalus, the original gadgeteers of Western culture. What were they up to? Why did the latter, for example, keep getting caught in traps of his own devising? Yours, Willard McCarty