skippyLet’s all just go back to email and mailing lists.
ringmaster@skippy I also enjoy typewriters and smallpox.
@ringmaster Typewriters are pretty cool. Smallpox, not so much.
Not everything old is bad.
@skippy Those giant road atlases were the bomb.
@ringmaster The planning and effort that went into creating things of quality from days gone by is a lot art. Now everything is just “good enough” and left to be updated or yanked at the whim of someone else.
@skippy I can understand how it seems that way, but also there are a lot more people now enabled to make things in ways they couldn’t before. Combine this with @pluralistic idea of enshittification, and sure, there’s the appearance of a lot more lousy stuff out there. It makes it hard to find the good stuff. To me, that makes the good stuff even more precious while we can have it. (1/2)
It doesn’t mean I want to go back to getting lost with a road atlas because my GPS app only lists Wendy’s because I didn’t pay for the Burger King upgrade. Or maybe it does, I dunno. Everything’s terrible. Thanks for killing my hope! (2/2)
@ringmaster I celebrate the ability for more people to make more stuff, absolutely!
I wonder if the ease of creation subtly encourages a sense of “good enough” that compounds over time to reduce quality? (To say nothing of rent-seeking profit maximizing you-don’t-own-what-you-buy modern business practices)
It’s a thorny problem.
@skippy I know that I, personally, have different “good enough” thresholds for different things. Does my willingness to set that bar low for certain projects due to my own needs necessarily affect others’ willingness to set their bar higher? Should I have to set my bar high for everything, regardless of personal expense (time/money/reputation/ability)? Maybe I’m too forgiving.
@ringmaster This thread went pretty far from the original premise, that we should all go back to email. I was being somewhat sarcastic, but I often find myself wondering how much I really need - or want - to have immediate access to the world’s stream of consciousness. Breaking news can be great, but also gets redundant fast.
Maybe I’m just becoming a grumpy old person, scared of the rapidly changing world.
@skippy Don’t be scared. You wont feel the singularity.
@ringmaster Because it will ignore me? Exclude me? Vaporize me?
@skippy Possibly that last thing, but more likely that first thing.
@ringmaster Well fine. I’ll make my own singularity, with black jack and beer!
@skippy Send me an email with the deets and I’ll be right over.
@ringmaster Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
mime-attachment.ics
invite.ics
Morydd@ringmaster @skippy
Hi friends. I've regularly told students "sometimes good enough is good enough." But only sometimes. Attention to detail and high accuracy is important, but not all of the time. The aesthetics of the front side of a set and the back side are very different. The code I write is, at best "good enough" but for my aquarium temperature sensors, it doesn't need to be well documented and clean. I think it can be as much about priority as about how you value the end product.
Hi friends. I've regularly told students "sometimes good enough is good enough." But only sometimes. Attention to detail and high accuracy is important, but not all of the time. The aesthetics of the front side of a set and the back side are very different. The code I write is, at best "good enough" but for my aquarium temperature sensors, it doesn't need to be well documented and clean. I think it can be as much about priority as about how you value the end product.
@morydd @ringmaster Yes, context matters.