On 01-01-2024 13:27, Gianluca Zoni via Dng wrote:
> a desktop system is not just its graphical layout. Let's get some
> clarity:
> - graphical setup is not an everyday practice:
> whether it is accomplished by filling out a graphical form or
> by writing very complicated software, it usually ends there,
> once and for all. Only people with severe psychological
> problems incessantly continue to change the parameters that
> define the graphical appearance of the system: the
> "self-documented" "ticked" GUI serves only once. And it can be
> done even without "desktop": it is just a software to change
> the configuration with a friendly interface.
> --> A friendly software for configuring the graphical appearance
> can be used even without desktop, for xterm as well as for
> any program, if you really want to. I don't think that's
> what the "desktop" is aimed at, because no sane person
> keeps - insistently - changing the settings
>
> - A desktop is a system that provides too many things in one
> block, because they consist of daily practice: for example,
> file-system navigation! All operations in the file-system via
> "desktop" applications are "gestural," they are by "primitive"
> monkeys. But those who turn on a computer are more advanced
> monkeys: they can write! If you can write, you can tell the
> computer what you want it to do, without having to repeat
> operations in a boring and stupid way. If you can write to the
> computer-in simple, elementary language (bash is easy to use,
> to take one example) - what you want the computer to do for
> you, you not only don't need a desktop, you don't even need to
> gesticulate like a stupid monkey, because you are a literate
> monkey
>
> - the desktop is for the illiterate: if you are not illiterate,
> then it is a limitation on your expression and action. Many
> people, used to the desktop, do not imagine what they can do
> with a computer. Basic principles of command-line programming
> are the basis of any elementary education. A 6-year-old
> learning to read and write can give articulate language orders
> to a computer.
>
>
> - a desktop system is systemic software designed for an overall
> experience: it is a habit of life. What I am contesting is
> precisely this closed view of the possibilities of using a
> machine that can have far greater potential even at an
> elementary level: "computer literacy" means being able to
> write to a computer telling it what to do, even in iterative
> operations and using variables, through the file system...
> Without a desktop, users would be forced to think, rather than
> gesture with the mouse.
> The power of the written word - according to logic - would
> become central. It is a pedagogical problem, but above all a
> civil and political one: it concerns habits and the attitude to
> freedom
> --> as McLuhan said: «the medium is the mEssage»
> --> but also (as claimed by his successors, for example De
> Kerckhove) «the medium is the mAssage»
>
Using *nix since 1988 I am quite literate in working from the command
line and for a lot of tasks I still do today.
For some other tasks I do use the desktop. Just a matter of choosing the
right tool for the task on hand.
Grtz.
Nick