When I grow up I want to be: an Islamic Jihadist

[_ebin_]

So it seems in my absence, over the ending of my summer, I had sought to create a more 'real' journal in physical form. I wrote well for a number of weeks, but as soon as the extreme pressures of fourth year history and history of science seminars materialized, of which I now take three - Although the fourth (third year) course I'm taking right now

Comments

[_ebin_]

There is certainly a distinction to be made between an entry level user or 'gamer' subsisting within a predetermined set of rules and the hobbyist/hacker who bends, breaks, or evades them. early computer's operating systems were command line non graphical interfaces. remember c prompt, dos? Apples ideology won out, and the majority of computer users turned themselves over over to continual simulation/desktop iconography.
Microsoft? IBM? effectively named the whole trand with 'windows'. Mr Gates usurped the content of apple's orignial pre-pc representational simulation programming that macintosh had developed, and after windows' succcesses, 'windows' pretty much came to characterize computer interfaces - simulated, opaque systems where you dont know the language - all you need is to know the terms of the system within which you are subsisting: My bag has a beetle in it too!

anyway, so freedom on the internet is already couched within the predetermined requisite terms of representation, and in some senses, must necessarily be unfree. unless youre a devout hacker. or maybe if you commit enough energy to democracynow.org, you see platonic forms and ascend.... i dont know.

if computers act only as mediators between disenfranchised social inepts, howcome there are so many who 'get involved' and consider themselves part of a rising wave of social action, centered around virtual communities? because its virtual, does it make it more or less powerful? i dont know. If the internet is a revolutionary virtual mechanism, why is there so much apolitical garbage on it? humour sites, porn, music (sorry neil young), 'timewasters', games, flash, death?

The meanings of text communications have changed a lot since the printing press was first developed. i wonder how?