@clarity if you can make the device you want just using software you get the economies of scale of industrial production (by using generic mass produced PCs and phones) no matter how small or niche your product is. and you can go from no one using a thing to everyone in the world using it overnight without having to ask capital for permission

@bob I’m not convinced that this is a good thing

@clarity the arguments against are basically the same arguments against cheap books and pamphlets in the 19th century. and those arguments had some merits, you might not have had the french revolution or the revolutions of 1848 without them, and arguably that would have been for the better. but that position is fundamentally a conservative one.

@bob how do you square this argument with Weizenbaum’s here? https://xoxo.zone/@clarity/110861149766840562

@clarity mechanical tabulating machines and telegraphs solve that problem well enough, you don't need computers. you certainly don't need personal computers. maybe you'd have to change the way balances are written on the checks, eg: having some kind of scantron-like system at the top that fed into a mechanical sorting/tabulating machine

@bob also, I consider a “tabulating machine” to still count as computation, and the telegraph is a form of telecommunication, so the fact that banks could get alone fine without silicon transistors isn’t super relevant to my train of thought yere. I’m interrogating the whole package, not just modern software.

@clarity if we're getting to "is the abacus a conservative force" I'm bowing out

@bob oh you meant literal abacuses and not like, automated machines? I misunderstood you, then