
“Devil Girl from Mars”: Why I Write Science Fiction (1998) - benbreen
http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/articles/butler_talk_index.html
======
princetman
This page is surprisingly belligerent to modern reader apps even if you
navigate past Frame issues. Pocket, Instapaper, Safari, Firefox reader view,
none of them can parse this correctly.

If you look past it all and actually read it, you'll find this gem of a
passage.

 _Beware! All too often, we say what we hear others say. We see what we are
permitted to see. Much worse, we see what we 're told that we see. Repetition
and pride are the keys to this. To hear or to see even an obvious lie again
and again and again, is to say it, almost by reflex, and then to defend it
because we have said it, and to embrace what we've defended. Thus without
thought or intent, we make mere echoes of ourselves and we say what we hear
others say._

~~~
mannykannot
Your opening comment is an interesting viewpoint, and, in particular, you have
made an interesting choice of adjective, as it is one that ascribes intent. If
I am understanding the Wayback Machine correctly, this page has been
essentially like this at least since February 2002, yet it would seem that its
author was acting in a hostile manner by not anticipating the limitations of
modern reader apps - or perhaps the site administrator is at fault, for
leaving it out there as a trap for an unsuspecting modern app user?

looking past this, I see that the passage you quote is indeed insightful.

~~~
princetman
Hmmm re-reading my comment, it does seem to put blame on the page. However, I
wouldn't expect relic of the past to be changed or maintained (cost
obviously). It just came as a surprise that big wall of text couldn't be
parsed by modern apps.

I expected modern parsers to be more clever. This article is a table like many
webpages were in the first decade. Wondering how we can improve readability of
such pages? May be the size of raw text ratio or something clever that
considers how the page is _rendered_ and extract key information.

Edit: Instapaper parsed it very well in the end!

~~~
Nasrudith
I didn't have issues with it and by no means is it the most egregious of the
90s - it was just designed for more or less fixed CRT assumptions. It would be
say 800x600 or so as a screen.

While smaller in resolution the screens were at least about a standard sheet
of printer paper and almost square.

I have gotten into a masochistic retrogames on Linux with minimal support and
you see a lot of things that need emulation because design assumptions that
were no brainers didn't hold long term back when Moore's law also applied to
clock speeds and multicore was really niche.

------
stu_k
Lots of interesting bits in here, and some parts very prescient. The more
interesting thoughts to me were near the end: “throw-away workers”, and the
last quote on “truth”.

~~~
bsenftner
As a developer who does not need to seek work, due to well known previous
work, I am dismayed as my friends are unable to acquire staff positions and
are all "disposable workers" \- long term freelance with no benefits.

That last quote on Truth is quite damning.

