I was fiddling with the conquest material on Sunday and fired up the SE/30 to inspect some floppy disks and plug in the trackball. I heard the sound of a grinding spinning media encountering resistance for about a second. It instantly commanded my attention and reminded me of the perilousness of digital media.
Computers and their infrastructure are rather frail. Basically, we have with our electronic gadgetry, a large superstructure supported by rather weak bonds. A real big gust of wind, and the building comes down.
Something to think about: If every electronic gadget that is in common use today, ie calculators, computers, cell phones, electronic cash registers, StuxNet infected PLCs, and so forth was instantly *gone*, how many of us would be able to do it the "old" way?
I don't have friend circles the size of celebrities, but there is only one person (although you could make that two) that knows (or says they know) how to use a slide rule (besides me). I mean, it's not critical to daily life, but a slide rule does have certain properties that are advantageous to its principle. One, a good K&E slide rule could last down to your grandchildren if it was well-cared for; two, no circuits to diagnose; three, it trains the mind to understand more fully what is going on, compared to just crunching √40 into a calculator (which, approximated, is 2√10, which is 2x3.1, or about 6.2, just off my head).
Computers and their infrastructure are rather frail. Basically, we have with our electronic gadgetry, a large superstructure supported by rather weak bonds. A real big gust of wind, and the building comes down.
Something to think about: If every electronic gadget that is in common use today, ie calculators, computers, cell phones, electronic cash registers, StuxNet infected PLCs, and so forth was instantly *gone*, how many of us would be able to do it the "old" way?
I don't have friend circles the size of celebrities, but there is only one person (although you could make that two) that knows (or says they know) how to use a slide rule (besides me). I mean, it's not critical to daily life, but a slide rule does have certain properties that are advantageous to its principle. One, a good K&E slide rule could last down to your grandchildren if it was well-cared for; two, no circuits to diagnose; three, it trains the mind to understand more fully what is going on, compared to just crunching √40 into a calculator (which, approximated, is 2√10, which is 2x3.1, or about 6.2, just off my head).