Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer (1987) [pdf]
48 comments
·May 3, 2025analog31
Terr_
Nevertheless, I go through life with the persistent unconscious belief that if I buy products-for-organizing I will become organized. :p
teekert
True, however, anything not digital gets lost. And I may have many messy backups but I will find that one 15 y/o photo or doc when I need it.
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SV_BubbleTime
Reminds me of the lottery… “If you aren’t happy before the money, you won’t be happy after”. Most people interviewed are not happy after relatively large wins, almost all report being isolated from family in the best cases and deeply resented and resentful more often than not.
Jtsummers
Past discussions
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42636195 - 3 months ago, 10 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31808269 - 3 years ago, 169 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2108463 - 14 years ago, 11 comments
ViktorRay
It's neat how this magazine printed the essay along with the responses of people to it. Many of those response letters are quite biting (in a good way).
Sometimes I feel disheartedned when I see harsh internet comments in response to an essay. For example, sometimes Paul Graham posts essays and people on Hacker News post blistering biting responses. I guess we should remember the letters that people used to send to magazine essays like this and remember that sometimes these harsh responses are par for the course when writing essays...
jes5199
huh. I’m aware of this author for other reasons - he’s popular among some carbon-capture enthusiasts. This… colors my opinion.
wwweston
I have questions about whether Berry would own that relationship even if (big if) he were convinced carbin capture was beneficial.
But more importantly — chances are VERY strong that Berry transcends most of the categories you’re familiar with and a few that you aren’t. He’s an outstanding voice, and a worthy thinker for anyone to sharpen their own mind with or against. Though even where I part ways with him — for example, I was always going to buy a computer (and more computers) — I usually discover that there was a tradeoff and value worth defending on the other side of my choice.
Also, the overlap between his standards for technology and open source values is pretty high.
tom_
I'd never heard of them before! But I'm sure some people that disapprove will come along soon enough to balance things out.
4b11b4
I know the author from Unsettling America.
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MaxPock
[flagged]
jazzyjackson
Anti computer people are blissfully unaware of your feelings toward them, maybe they're onto something
Wendell Barry had a perfectly successful career without having to touch computers, and there will be people in twenty years who lead careers without having to interact with AI personalities
edm0nd
>Anti computer people are blissfully unaware of your feelings toward them, maybe they're onto something
Theodore Kaczynski had some interesting ideas about modern technology and its impact on society.
8bitbeep
Hopefully there will be careers for people in 20 years.
jes5199
kinda hope there won’t be and we all retire to leisure
LPisGood
It’s kind of a shame that we set up a system where this is the case.
User23
That reminds me of this: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html.
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Jedd
By anti-AI, do you mean people who oppose the seemingly whimsical (while potentially being an existential threat) creation of genuine artificial intelligence without exercising unprecedented levels of caution, or people who mistake LLMs for intelligence?
vemom
This writer doesn't look obnoxious to me they make good points. Of course they make good points only for their use case. I'd rather keep computers as a thing and have all the medical advances, plane safety, science advances we have seen. I also couldn't do what I first did on a computer with a pencil: program an automaton. But it is worth reading other points of view and seeing their side.
II2II
I am sympathetic with his message today, when I would have been dismissive of it in 1987. I also realize that I shouldn't have been dismissive of it in 1987. Even though the industry of today is far more damaging than it was then, it is only because there were so many benefits yet-to-reap. The industry itself was just as manipulative and just as greedy. While most of the old empires have fallen, new ones have taken their place.
That said, I think his tone was a mistake. It is not that technology is inherently good or bad. The fault is in how we fail to examine the role it should play. Each of the nine criteria that he lays out could have been met, but as individuals and society we have decided upon a different path.
makotech221
i dunno ask the nft/memecoin/VR/3D-TV people. Sometimes the anti-new thing people are actually correct
aurareturn
Ask internet people, TV people, computer people, GPU people, solar energy people, etc.
We going to play this game?
kgwxd
I fear they'll look like RMS looks in regards to proprietary hardware and software today. Show me a nightmare warning that hasn't become reality.
User23
Remember that the FSF happened because printers suck. Shockingly printers still suck.
walrus01
Plenty of people are anti "AI" because the uses they see it being put to are AI slop posted on Facebook to be responded to by boomers or bots. Or both. The dead Internet theory is becoming real.
nelsonfigueroa
This. I even see more professional pages (personal technical blogs, corporate technical blogs) use text and images that are straight up AI slop.
falcor84
Maybe it's just me, but while I have an issue with text slop, GenAI images never bothered me. My experience is that they're only really used where the alternative would have been a lazy stock photo or clipart image. And in these cases, it seems to me that writing a prompt is actually more of an artistic expression than the even more minimal effort that they likely would have spent on taking the first image they would have found on google.
An amusing anecdote: I was in grad school in 1987. The university had a campus computer store, which gave out a pamphlet: "Should I get a computer?" It listed many pro's and con's, nothing surprising for the era. I already had a computer. The thing that stuck with me, was the advice: "Don't expect a computer to organize you. If you have a messy desk, you will have a messy computer."
Sure as shootin', even to this day, I still have a messy computer.