Class

mid-afternoon on Thursday, the 2nd of October 2003 by Chad

InTheBeginningWasTheCommandLine - spack[dot]org starts off about the differences between Apple, Microsoft, and other Operating systems and starts in general commentary about the human condition.

Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, except that it’s been turned upside down. In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it’s the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks. So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we’ve evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands.

That just about neatly sums up the difference in the educated vs. the masses. And I’m not talking about the “elite” because they’re usually more ignorant than the common folk. But in years past, the difference between the thinkers and the doers was much smaller. Most of what needed to be done in the world was doing, not thinking. That has changed, and now the gulf widens. Even those that could be doers have become the thinkers, the technology workers, paid more for whats in their heads than what they do with their hands. I’m one of those myself. I’ve worked manual labor, even worked as an electrician for a while. But I always came back to technology, be it electronics or computers. And I don’t look back.

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Scott Says:
October 2nd, 2003 at 4:15 pm Add karma

Today the reporter asked me if I would recommend IT to my kid. The visceral response was “Hell NO!”. But then he asked me about my own feelings about IT.

I love IT. It is the Island of Misfit Toys. Everyone can be eccentric and iconoclastic or “normal” if they want yet still earn a decent living. It is the perfect job for the insatiably curious and for those who bore easily. Tired of C programming? No worries, Java is on the horizon. Tired of Java? There’s always something else.

In IT I have been forced to use all of my wits, learn new skills I thought I was incapable of, and push the very limits of my own identity. Where else could a shy bookworm like me develop into such a loudmouth opinion-meister who is as un-afraid of CEOs and Congressmen as my kid is of the other kids on the playground.

I love IT, and that’s why I am now pushing the ITPAA. I don’t want to see the industry pissed away for no reason at all.

Chad Says:
October 2nd, 2003 at 8:14 pm Add karma

I’ve noticed one IT position that seems to be perfect for the long term. VRU (Voice Response Unit) programmer. They’re all freaks, no one else wants to touch what they do, and the technology doesn’t really change. And they can make tons of $$.

Fûz Says:
October 16th, 2003 at 12:42 am Add karma

Am not exactly IT, but for some reason I understand computers better than the average bear.
I posted on an eerily-parallel comparison between geeks and the Ambitious at my blog in the last week, please visit and have a look.

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