It only bugs me when it has no connection to using tech to regulate a system. As in, you know, the original meaning. As opposed to just meaning tech. So almost always. Like with this thing.
@canuk Oh, hell no. This photo was taken long ago (most likely in the late seventies, early eighties). I did love the CDC machines, though, and their descendant, the Cray.
Hah! I still own aviator-style Mirrorshades (albeit precription). I read the collection of stories in “Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology” (Bruce Sterling), and Neuromancer (William Gibson) when they were new (in ancient days). Who knew Cyberpunk would last so long?
@Shrdlu
Your mention sent me back in memory to the the Universal Well of Weiner and Von Neumann Anecdotes
Scanning the Wikipedia page. Wow. Gregory Bateson + Margaret Mead + Norbert Weiner. That takes me back.
For those who haven’t heard these stories, here are a few about Weiner:
Several alumni, remembered that during his peregrinations through the halls [at MIT], Wiener typically left one hand in contact with the wall. Possible explanations abounded, but on at least one occasion, Wiener cited the mathematical theorem that an open maze can always be solved by following one wall or the other. As long as he kept his hand on the wall, he knew he would ultimately find his way back to Building 2.
Jay Ball ‘56, SM ‘61, recalled sitting at a Cambridge coffee shop with a Chinese friend and inviting Wiener to join their table. Wiener addressed the friend in fluent Mandarin, but the friend turned out to speak only Cantonese. So Wiener simply switched dialects. “My father spoke 17 languages fluently,” he told them, “but I’m a dope. I can only speak 12.”
anecdotes about Wiener’s absentmindedness: the time he reported the theft of his car to the police, only to discover that he had driven it to Providence for a talk and taken the train back;
the conversation in an MIT hallway that he concluded by asking his interlocutor which way he had been heading when he stopped to chat, greeting the answer with “Good! That means I’ve already had lunch.”
“I took two semester courses under Professor Wiener: one was Fourier Series and Fourier Integrals, and the other was, I believe, Operational Calculus. It is vivid in my memory that Professor Wiener would always come to class without any lecture notes. He would first take out his big handkerchief and blow his nose very vigorously and noisily. He would pay very little attention to his class and would seldom announce the subject of his lecture. He would face the blackboard, standing very close to it because he was extremely near-sighted. Although I usually sat in the front row, I had difficulty seeing what he wrote. Most of the other students could not see anything at all. It was most amusing to the class to hear Professor Wiener saying to himself, “This was very wrong, definitely.” He would quickly erase all he had written down. He would then start all over again, and sometimes murmur to himself, “This looks all right so far.” Minutes later, “This cannot be right either,” and he would rub it all out again. This on- again, off-again process continued until the bell signaled the end of the hour. Then Professor Wiener would leave the room without even looking at his audience”.
Phyllis L. Block, graduate administrator in the Department of Mathematics (MIT) recalls: “His (Wiener’s) office was a few doors down the hall from mine. He often visited my office to talk to me. When my office was moved after a few years, he came in to introduce himself. He didn’t realize I was the same person he had frequently visited [before]; I was in a new office so he thought I was someone else”.
an MIT alumnus who “was driving in New Hampshire and stopped to help a tubby-looking man with a flat tire.
He recognized Norbert Wiener and asked if he could help. Wiener asked if [the alumnus] knew him. Yes, he said, he had taken calculus with him. Did you pass?' asked Wiener.Yes.’ `Then you can help me,’ said Wiener”.
He went to a conference and parked his car in the big lot. When the conference was over, he went to the lot but forgot where he parked his car. He even forgot was his car looked like. So he waited until all the other cars were driven away, then took the car that was left.
When he and his family moved to a new house a few blocks away, his wife gave him written directions on how to reach it, since she knew he was absent-minded. But when he was leaving his office at the end of the day, he couldn’t remember where he put her note, and he couldn’t remember where the new house was. So he drove to his old neighborhood instead. He saw a young child and asked her, “Little girl, can you tell me where the Wieners moved?” “Yes, Daddy,” came the reply, “Mommy said you’d probably be here, so she sent me to show you the way home”.
One day he was sitting in the campus lounge, intensely studying a paper on the table. Several times he’d get up, pace a bit, then return to the paper. Everyone was impressed by the enormous mental effort reflected on his face. Once again he rose from his paper, took some rapid steps around the room, and collided with a student. The student said, “Good afternoon, Professor Wiener.” Wiener stopped, stared, clapped a hand to his forehead, said “Wiener - that’s the word,” and ran back to the table to fill the word “wiener” in the crossword puzzle he was working on.
If you don’t like the amazing word cyber, stop reading my cyberwords. Go read a cyberbook instead, you know one of those cyberarchaic things made out of cybertrees. My cyberspider and me don’t need you to look for cyberchicks to cyber with.
@ELUNO Good luck to you & your cyberspider to find accommodating chicks of ANY kind
Which has me thinking: A cyborg can be a chick, right? As long as she/it has two X chromosomes in the organic bits
If you threw in lots of bio-mech and sophisticated machine code, would attaining That Obscure Object Of Desire ever get any easier or more straightforward?
I hate cyber.
@awk
I wuv cyber
Cyberscientology will be the coming religion!!!
@eeterrific I guess, but would we really notice a difference? Sure, they’ll all be mindless robotic drones, but so will the cyberscientologists.
It only bugs me when it has no connection to using tech to regulate a system. As in, you know, the original meaning. As opposed to just meaning tech. So almost always. Like with this thing.
@simplersimon
/destroy “original meaning”
I use cyber in context of “The Net (1995)” all the time.
I still get creeped out by the word, thanks to the chat rooms of the 90’s.
@Thumperchick
/image wanna cyber?
Yep, I am this old.
/image CDC cyber computer
@Shrdlu is that you?!?!
@canuk Oh, hell no. This photo was taken long ago (most likely in the late seventies, early eighties). I did love the CDC machines, though, and their descendant, the Cray.
/image Seymour Cray
@Shrdlu See more cray cray.
@Shrdlu
Goes nicely with
/image crayfish etoufee
Cyber-Monday is the only acceptable “cyber.”
“Cyber” still sounds very creepy though…
@hems79
So be unacceptable
/giphy cyberman
@sohmageek AMAZING giphy… but it doesn’t show the
/giphy cyberman
People who overuse it should be sent to Cyberia.
The cyber is important. My son is great with computers and the cyber.
anyone who thinks this ever stopped being cool is kidding themselves
Hah! I still own aviator-style Mirrorshades (albeit precription). I read the collection of stories in “Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology” (Bruce Sterling), and Neuromancer (William Gibson) when they were new (in ancient days). Who knew Cyberpunk would last so long?
@harrison
Potential bicameral crash state
Insufficient swagger space
@harrison get rid of all the really outdated tech, and he would probably be attractive.
@RiotDemon the only turn-offs i see here are the empty cans of jolt sitting around
@harrison haha… Would it be more attractive if they were full?
Seriously though, half that technology (or more) could probably be replaced with a modern smart phone.
@harrison Ah, the indespensible pager…
I may be one of the few here that has actually READ Cybernetics (by Norbert Wiener, in the long ago times).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics:_Or_Control_and_Communication_in_the_Animal_and_the_Machine
Ah, coffee, that thing by which life is made more pleasant.
@Shrdlu
Hey I read it!
Which is to say
I opened the book. I put my fab vision onto all the words. I puzzled over stuff. I turned pages.
Repeat
/giphy "summertime blues"
@Shrdlu
Your mention sent me back in memory to the the Universal Well of Weiner and Von Neumann Anecdotes
Scanning the Wikipedia page. Wow. Gregory Bateson + Margaret Mead + Norbert Weiner. That takes me back.
For those who haven’t heard these stories, here are a few about Weiner:
Several alumni, remembered that during his peregrinations through the halls [at MIT], Wiener typically left one hand in contact with the wall. Possible explanations abounded, but on at least one occasion, Wiener cited the mathematical theorem that an open maze can always be solved by following one wall or the other. As long as he kept his hand on the wall, he knew he would ultimately find his way back to Building 2.
Jay Ball ‘56, SM ‘61, recalled sitting at a Cambridge coffee shop with a Chinese friend and inviting Wiener to join their table. Wiener addressed the friend in fluent Mandarin, but the friend turned out to speak only Cantonese. So Wiener simply switched dialects. “My father spoke 17 languages fluently,” he told them, “but I’m a dope. I can only speak 12.”
anecdotes about Wiener’s absentmindedness: the time he reported the theft of his car to the police, only to discover that he had driven it to Providence for a talk and taken the train back;
the conversation in an MIT hallway that he concluded by asking his interlocutor which way he had been heading when he stopped to chat, greeting the answer with “Good! That means I’ve already had lunch.”
“I took two semester courses under Professor Wiener: one was Fourier Series and Fourier Integrals, and the other was, I believe, Operational Calculus. It is vivid in my memory that Professor Wiener would always come to class without any lecture notes. He would first take out his big handkerchief and blow his nose very vigorously and noisily. He would pay very little attention to his class and would seldom announce the subject of his lecture. He would face the blackboard, standing very close to it because he was extremely near-sighted. Although I usually sat in the front row, I had difficulty seeing what he wrote. Most of the other students could not see anything at all. It was most amusing to the class to hear Professor Wiener saying to himself, “This was very wrong, definitely.” He would quickly erase all he had written down. He would then start all over again, and sometimes murmur to himself, “This looks all right so far.” Minutes later, “This cannot be right either,” and he would rub it all out again. This on- again, off-again process continued until the bell signaled the end of the hour. Then Professor Wiener would leave the room without even looking at his audience”.
Phyllis L. Block, graduate administrator in the Department of Mathematics (MIT) recalls: “His (Wiener’s) office was a few doors down the hall from mine. He often visited my office to talk to me. When my office was moved after a few years, he came in to introduce himself. He didn’t realize I was the same person he had frequently visited [before]; I was in a new office so he thought I was someone else”.
an MIT alumnus who “was driving in New Hampshire and stopped to help a tubby-looking man with a flat tire.
He recognized Norbert Wiener and asked if he could help. Wiener asked if [the alumnus] knew him. Yes, he said, he had taken calculus with him.
Did you pass?' asked Wiener.Yes.’ `Then you can help me,’ said Wiener”.He went to a conference and parked his car in the big lot. When the conference was over, he went to the lot but forgot where he parked his car. He even forgot was his car looked like. So he waited until all the other cars were driven away, then took the car that was left.
When he and his family moved to a new house a few blocks away, his wife gave him written directions on how to reach it, since she knew he was absent-minded. But when he was leaving his office at the end of the day, he couldn’t remember where he put her note, and he couldn’t remember where the new house was. So he drove to his old neighborhood instead. He saw a young child and asked her, “Little girl, can you tell me where the Wieners moved?” “Yes, Daddy,” came the reply, “Mommy said you’d probably be here, so she sent me to show you the way home”.
One day he was sitting in the campus lounge, intensely studying a paper on the table. Several times he’d get up, pace a bit, then return to the paper. Everyone was impressed by the enormous mental effort reflected on his face. Once again he rose from his paper, took some rapid steps around the room, and collided with a student. The student said, “Good afternoon, Professor Wiener.” Wiener stopped, stared, clapped a hand to his forehead, said “Wiener - that’s the word,” and ran back to the table to fill the word “wiener” in the crossword puzzle he was working on.
If you don’t like the amazing word cyber, stop reading my cyberwords. Go read a cyberbook instead, you know one of those cyberarchaic things made out of cybertrees. My cyberspider and me don’t need you to look for cyberchicks to cyber with.
@ELUNO Good luck to you & your cyberspider to find accommodating chicks of ANY kind
Which has me thinking: A cyborg can be a chick, right? As long as she/it has two X chromosomes in the organic bits
@compunaut Aww. Not even a robot could ever love me
You are forgetting about the C chromosome. The Cyberchromosome.
@ELUNO
@thismyusername Y U DO DIS 2 MEE!?!?
@ELUNO
@thismyusername
@compunaut
If you threw in lots of bio-mech and sophisticated machine code, would attaining That Obscure Object Of Desire ever get any easier or more straightforward?
First vid has moments of NSFW
@ELUNO just funnin’ wit ya