Response concerning technical training and technical integrity at the Stanley Fish site

At the Stanley Fish discussion of “Fathers, Sons, and Motorcycles”, a Mr. Jim Niemeier compares the philosophers to the technicians and finds the former wanting.

Interesting comments, Mr. Niemeier. But is it true that intense technical training in one or two technical subjects leadeth to the palace of wisdom?

It may be merely a New Model form of Sophistry.

In the 1980s, I read an article by a man with a new computer who compared “Freud, Hegel and Marx” unfavorably in terms of the precision of referents with the (anonymous) authors of his technical manuals, because when they used words such as “input port” or “memory”, those words had, to our friend, a definite reference, whereas the words used by F/H/M were slippery and undefinable, and it seemed to him (as it seemed to no less than Sir Karl Popper) that FHM could adjust their Freudian, Hegelian or Marxist computer to come out with the answers they “wanted”.

Whereas computer programmers and technical writers were humble servants of reality, like motorcycle repairmen.

In 1975 this was actually something that needed to be said because in fact FHM discourse was out of control.

But in 1985, in Silicon Valley, I saw the definitions of technical terms equally in-play and adjusted for desired results. The IO architecture of the IBM PC, which causes a lot of unsolved problems in Windows, was jiggered by unprincipled programmers so that greedy managers could get to market fast with dysfunctional machines running absurd software (such as Windows 1.0 and Microsoft Bob), and the whole mess was documented by technical writers treated like subhumans and directed to write falsehoods.

Essentially, the same ridiculous sorts of mistakes were made in the Gadarene rush to market as were made in the design of subroutine call on the IBM 1620 circa 1962, and general registers on the IBM 360 circa 1964: the Puritan fantasy that specific “resources” should have fixed and unchanging referents, and that to ask for more (such as a variable stack) was less virtuous.

The system, like certain forms of the Freudian/Hegelian/Marxist monologue, was in fact made unfalsifiable. Intellectually principled people were driven away and bullied: for example, Ted “Computer Lib” Nelson proposed a network architecture (Xanadu) that would allow people to “post” material, but (1) always credit them with authorship by means of two-way links and therefore (2) require them to take responsibility for what they said.

Nelson’s architecture was decried as “inefficient” using the strange model of the incompetent programmer, for whom “thinking” is “inefficient”, and instead Tim Berners Lee’s one-way links were used to create the Internet. The result is (1) widespread theft of intellectual production and its transformation by unprincipled traders into intellectual property and (2) anonymous bullying where the bullies need not take responsibility for their actions.

This is as corrupt if not more so than recreational deconstruction. Technical training does NOT necessarily teach personal integrity.

I will also post my response to Mr. Niemeier at my blog (www.spinoza1111.wordpress.com) in the event that the moderators do not consider it Fit To Print.