Dan Beckmann, Moderator of Letters
02.20.02-Chicago’s Loop, IL
The Robots vs. The Programmers
There is indeed an underlying feud between two factions of the “civilized” world…in this case, I will use Robots and Programmer as the symbolic icons in this rumble, but in the past I can recall some other relevant symbols that would have worked pretty damn well here too.
I first came to my primitive understanding of this duopoly way back in the Summer of 2000 while cruisin1 around with my friend Mark on a starry, starry night just about 20 miles out of Bozeman, Montana. At the time we were not very much concerned with the upcoming Sydney Games®, but more so with our revelation that there indeed existed two categories in life: those who are the “tool bags of society” and those who are not. I believe this discussion came about as I was considering the repetitive patterns to which people around me appeared to subscribe, during my first lengthy confrontation with the “work-a-day” lifestyle as a one-man-band reporter in Butte. I would later realize that despite the patterns that I plagued my workplace back in that former Western mining town, my newer experiences revealed that the more civilized centers of centralized collaborative work back East were actually gestation points for these “toolbags of society.”
Since Mark and I formally and primitively established these two factions, from that point forward, I have been able to view interactions within my environment from time to time more clearly from this new perspective. I have worked to more specifically identify these two groupings, and now I feel like I am at a point where I cannot only share my observations with this community, but also incite other to act based upon my gathered evidence.this is also why I have place this in the Revolting category, not in just Research, although the information gathering in this area is still an on-going PRO-cess.
To help illustrate this issue, I will make statements that may sound pretty damn good at EPCOT Center’s “Land Of Innovation” or whatever they call it-however, I don1t think they belong there. I also don1t think that they belong in an Apple commercial either, although for the sake of my friend David…I will yield that it maybe possible that Apple “thinks differently” because on the surface it appears as though no one else besides Bill Gates, came up with the original idea to steal their “thinking differently”<-although in reality stealing someone else's idea and profiting from it probably isn't anything new.
No, you could pluck out statements from these graphs to use in your ultra-hype mass-media marketing campaign, but I am trying to appeal to what I call the Programmers with this revolution, and the Robots I guess can toss this with everything else that they can1t seem to understand in the trash->they had better not recycle it!.
There are two main constructs of my understanding behind these two groups: Ones own understanding of their own actions and Evolutionary Prospects/Mission
.To use the corporate environment as a template, although I would like to make certain that this occurs naturally on the subway, the suburban shopping mall, the fraternity house, at Cheers®, heck even in family structures…In fact, the best Robots have everything laid out for them down to each second they are alive<-even the course of each conversation they hold previously determined...But for now lets just use the corporation... There are the people who are the workers->The Robots, then there are the people who program what the workers dothe Programmers (Not always to be confused with the C.E.O or upper management).
Despite our school systems, and despite what some middle managers may think…I have always, even before I even knew it, I always wanted to be the Programmer. Yes, sure, we need robots, because without them then there would be nothing to program. But the problem is getting to the point of being a programmer, because the way the world is set up, the odds are stacked heavily against Programmers.
In order to be a Programmer, one has to rise above the robots, and in many cases, the robots robotically have control over you through the assigned and robotic tasks that they give you for your “betterment”. These Robots know nothing else other than the way that they have been programmed whether they realize it or not (and in some cases they actually do).
This is where the evolution comes into the picture. These people that are happy to perpetuate the way that they have been programmed as the gospel truth, will have a problem adapting to a sudden or even gradual change in the environment if there is no guidebook from which to govern their actions in lieu of these shifts. This could possibly even be displayed as high up as our very own office of The President of the United States. The best “Prezes” are Programmers—NOTE: we will get to listing these people later on this revolution and these lists will also be a load-bearing member of this Experimental Prototype website Community Of Thefuture®. To put it simply, when a robot experiences a situation for which they are not programmed, they lock up,,, fail to function,,, break down,,, maybe even steam starts coming from all of their seams and they explode outward in every direction. (References:Big Trouble in Little China®, Short Circuit®, Short Circuit 2®, etc…).
And while our corner of the world may be very well civilized, frankly, historical and present-day evidence solidly proves that the laws of nature can not be controlled by an artificially inscribed piece of paper, no matter how well intentioned that document may be.
With this in mind, if one is to take the survival of the fittest seriously, those who are able to program, will also be the ones who are able to adapt and also to survive.
Let me further clarify the qualifications of the being a part of the Programmer’s category to dispel any rumors. You need not be rich, nor poor, nor in the Upper-Middle to be a Programmer. In fact, I was recently out on a story where I met a programmer who was in the form of a construction worker. He had no education other then what law mandated, and he was not paid extremely well for his work, but he liked destroying and building roads up and he knew how to do it well and quickly by figuring it out on his own. In not being afraid to work faster and providing innovations to his construction firm, he is now just 20 years old and has worked his way up to project manager almost immediately in just 1 year. He had the concepts in his mind in order to do this, not the imprinted ideas from some book. But what he told me at the end of our conversation was quite unsettling, he explained that he learned how to figure out his trade from watching the “old-timers” who were all soon retiring and they all knew how to build roads from their heads because that was their personal trade. Now that those people are on their way out, there may be no one left who just knows what they are doing. Their replacements will be a more automated approach of consulting some holy place above on how to do their work—also, the workers may be less likely to take ownership and pride in their work, not their craft, because it was never their “own” idea.
The severity of our situation comes to light vividly here as it shows that while our world is becoming more civilized and as the so-called Greatest Generation that had to figure out on it1s own how to survive a Depression, is now dying out FAST! As a result, there will not only be an extreme shortage of Programmers who know what is needed to replace them, but also, there will be an increasing amount of Robots who will hold leadership positions that can prevent further evolution and survival of our species.
Let me further put to rest any argument that may be coming into your mind about Liberals being Programmers and Conservatives being Robots this is not the case. There are absolutely no party lines on this issue, and despite your political objectives, whatever they may be, as long as you are coming up with your own trajectory, you are indeed attempting to program. An example of this may be the illustrious Richard J. Daley’s response to the protests surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention. Ol’ Daley directly programmed the Chicago Police to literally beat those liberal hippies on their heads in order to protect what Daley perceived to be his breed’s own survival. Everyone knows that he made the call on that one completely on his own<-nobody else could have had anything to do with it. Maybe if the officers were less robotic, they could have still maintained the civil order without prompting such an eruptive riot...
Then there was Gov. Ronald Reagan's response to protests by Berkeley during the same era. Reagan basically taunted an angry crowd of "them unruly youngsters" to riot from his perch on a balcony. He also sent in the National Guard in to squash the student dissenters as they attempted to surround a draft office in Oakland, CA-that was back in the day when he was actually a Programmer too, and what was displayed there was pure Reagan. Programming knows no party lines.
So the revolution starts here in this community. But let me clarify my intentions. I am not merely advocating throwing wrenched into the gears of Robots, although this can of course be an enriching passtime. No, that is not what I am looking for at all, I mean I have to admit that there are some robotic functions in all of us-like our hearts beating…and sometimes you don’t want to fuck with that type of shit. The reason I felt compelled to display my evidence here, is that I think that it is important to teach people how to indentify who the Programmers are so that they can more easily find each other. Once they find each other, then incredible things will happen. In fact, I don’t think true Programmers will ever be happy unless they find fellow Programmers to Program with–such may be their natural place.
In order to better indentify who’s who, I support that we use our new lists, and our research categories, along with all of the other parts of this website to further expose who the robots are and from where they are being programmed. I also suggest that if you are under the constraints of robot management, that you utilize this virtually unlimited space to educate the other programmers of their actions.
We will begin with this new List Concept here I’ll start it out:
In order to place someone on either the Robot list or the Programmer list you must give the person1s implied name and the one or two lines of proof behind your assertion that they are in that category. For instance:
-Robots-
Arthur Fonzereli
Fonzi ® might seem like a rebellious dude, but his repetitive “Mr. & Mrs. C” and of course who can forget his “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”<-that give his true identity away.
-Programmers-
Papa Smurf®
His control was with not with an iron fist, yet you wouldn1t know it by how well he had not only the village but the whole damn forest programmed through his magic bullshit. Despite all warnings from Brainy, arguably the smartest Smurf® in the lot…Papa wouldn1t take no shit from anyone and he did it his way! The man couldn1t even go on a vacation for cryin1 out loud!
