It’s a little depressing that these days we mainly use computers to consume fast and react fast. Task management turns us into more productive human machines. Rather conveniently for managers, human machines have higher predictability and lower inherent value – they’re easy to automate, replace, and erase.

Productivity is important, but it’s just... See more

Part of the origin myth of modern computing is the story of a golden age in the 1960s and 1970s. In this story, visionary pioneers pursued a dream in which computers enabled powerful tools for thought, that is, tools to augment human intelligence

E.g., Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (1962).

. One of those... See more

The personal computing revolution succeeded and we are all miserable. The dream of personal computing as augmentation for the intellect, and the joyful, radical counterculture that arose around the first PC’s has given way to our increasingly dismal present.