Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 21:14:30 +0200 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no> To: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: internationalization Message-ID: <19980613211430.51924@follo.net> In-Reply-To: <19980613212837.A17939@doriath.org>; from Anatoly Vorobey on Sat, Jun 13, 1998 at 09:28:37PM %2B0000 References: <199806121443.HAA09471@mailgate.cadence.com> <199806121619.JAA08857@usr02.primenet.com> <19980613212837.A17939@doriath.org>
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On Sat, Jun 13, 1998 at 09:28:37PM +0000, Anatoly Vorobey wrote:
> You, Terry Lambert, were spotted writing this on Fri, Jun 12, 1998 at 04:19:35PM +0000:
> > Some people watch television; I read. A lot. At one point in time, I
> > actually ran out of science fiction books to read at my local Carnegie
> > Free Library (the Weber County Library at the time), and had to start
> > on the history and biography sections. Thankfully, more science fiction
> > arrived before I ran out of biographies. For scale, I personally own
> > around 3500 books which I have read, and very few of them overlap with
> > what was in the library at the time.
> >
> > I think people should read more; if you're going to be antisocial, do
> > it with a book instead of a television. 8-).
>
> I definitely agree, but I do wonder at the choice of SciFi as the main
> reading material (perhaps it isn't in your case, but it is in case of
> most of reading programmers and hackers I know). It always struck me as
> something weird that so many otherwise very intelligent people, who
> are able to create amazingly clever and beautiful algorithms/programs/OSes,
> spend so much of their time reading essentially trashy literature, not
> much different in its average quality from detective stories or paperback
> romance novels. They can explain to you subtle details of VM architecture,
> or tell you the plots of all William Gibson novels, but ask them about
> Flaubert or T.S.Eliott or Cortasar or Chaucer or Pushkin or Italo Calvino
> and you mostly get blank looks in return.
I believe you're missing the point of SF[1]. The point isn't to see
how many layers of allegories and symbols one can create, or how
clever one can be with words. The point is to evoke a sense of wonder
("sensawunda"), to show how people could react to changes, to make you
aware of the infinite potential of technology and people, to paint a
few brushstrokes at the edge of your imagination, showing what may yet
become your (or your descendants) normal day.
I certainly don't find it strange that this is what engineers prefer
reading - many of us became engineers by inspiration from SF, and all
of us work with shaping the future. We want to predict and shape, not
read anout what fictional people could have done in the last century,
unless it helps us understand the present or predict the future.
Eivind.
[1] SF, not SciFi. SciFi is a word almost only used by the people
that don't read SF - journalists and other lesser species ;-)
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