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This is a post about workflow and what I think about distractions
in modern computing.
As I write this piece it is on a small screen, the background is
solarized light and I see plain text. There are no push
notifications, I see no tempting elements to click. My mind is
generally all about the issue at hand. I have a top-notch Macbook
Pro right beside me, but still I am here on this Lenovo x395 that
represents a something else.
While I in some ways envy the worry-free computing our growing
generation encounter, I also feel compassion for the conventional
computing they will never be exposed to in the way that I have
been. Like my generation never experienced the transition from
transistors to modern CPUs in the 70-80s and can with few
exceptions understand it, most of the upcoming generation will
never experience "slow computing". The reason I think this is in
some ways a shame is that slow computing leaves space to think.
About why you interact with the system, what to do and how and
when to do it.
Combined with people indoctrinated on Microsoft Office, modern
computing have left workers as robots with their primary mission
to answer emails and managing calendar appointments. In some ways
the art of communicating with each other and interacting without a
digital reference has become lost. Freedom of defining your
digital workspace should not and cannot be different to the
freedom of organising your physical space.
Modern computing comes with bells and whistles, and I think that
companies seeking cost-efficient and standardised computing
environments are to blame. I think pragmatism is to blame for
those environments. I also think "the cloud" is an attempt at
creating a walled garden. Bureacracy are also to blame. An attempt
at cost-effiency where the end-user is under-estimated and the
systems dumbed down. We have built a digital world that imprints
the use of products, generic in themselves, with little to no
options for automation besides what the author meant for. All
depending on a few global companies.
When I open my laptop lid, I log in and see a terminal, or crashed
screen as some likes to describe it. It is like a blank canvas
with no outputs, just waiting for a command about what I would
like to do next. At this point I might navigate to a blog
directory and open a document with my text editor of choice: emacs
[1]. When done writing this post I will add it to git, my text
versioning system. After this I do whatever I please with the text
file. I might push it to my central blog repository where a static
HTML file generates on a public area or I may pipe it to some
other program. This is the Unix philosophy [2].
After writing this post I may choose to check my mailbox for new
messages that I am expecting. My electronic mail system runs
decentralised and works for me, and me only. The reason for it is
that I like to control my own data. I do not want my letters read
by others, neither prying commercial or government eyes. For this
I use neomutt, notmuch and muchsync.
Occasionally I like to communicate remotely with others, and for
this purpose I use Riot, based on the distributed Matrix-protocol.
Even though much is best formulated in words, The Multitasking
Mind by Salvucci and Taatgen, and Edward Tufte thaught me about
the power of visualisation and automation [3,4]. This is also why
I program in Python and Nim, and sometimes design illustrations to
get my message across.
I may have been an avid macOS user once, but in the future I will
seek to come as close as possible to using my computing platform
as a tool, rather than to become a tool for those who seek to
profit on others in cyberspace. I know it won't be easy because
computing also has a social component, and that is the real
challenge.
I will leave you with a link to Make Time [5] which have in some
ways helped my journey.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtieBc3KptU
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
[3] The Multitasking Mind, Tufte and Taatgen, 2010, ISBN:
9780199733569
[4] https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
[5] https://maketime.blog/articles/