The computer may be incompetent in itself--that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured.
Design is not limited to fancy new gadgets. Our family just bought a new washing machine and dryer. We didn__ have a very good one so we spent a little time looking at them. It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better _ but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don__ trash your clothes. They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. We spent some time in our family talking about what__ the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. We__ get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design. We ended up opting for these Miele appliances, made in Germany. They__e too expensive, but that__ just because nobody buys them in this country. They are really wonderfully made and one of the few products we__e bought over the last few years that we__e all really happy about. These guys really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.
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Design is not limited to fancy new gadgets. Our family just bought a new washing machine and dryer. We didn__ have a very good one so we spent a little time looking at them. It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better _ but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don__ trash your clothes. They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. We spent some time in our family talking about what__ the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. We__ get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design. We ended up opting for these Miele appliances, made in Germany. They__e too expensive, but that__ just because nobody buys them in this country. They are really wonderfully made and one of the few products we__e bought over the last few years that we__e all really happy about. These guys really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.
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Spirituality is committing suicide. Consciousness is attempting to will itself out of existence.
To paraphrase Hannah Arendt__s portrayed in the recently released movie of the same name__he Nazi war criminal__ actions stemmed from her well-known phrase __anality of evil,_ not as a result of mental illness but as a result of a lack of thinking. Their greatest error was delegating the process of thinking and decision-making to their higher ups. In Rudolf Höss__ case, this would have been his superiors, particularly Heinrich Himmler. To many this conclusion is troubling, for it suggests that if everyday, __ormal,_ sane men and women are capable of evil, then the atrocities perpetrated during the Holocaust and other genocides could be repeated today and into the future.Yet, this is exactly the lesson we must learn from the war criminals at Nuremberg. We must be ever wary of those who do not take responsibility for their actions. And we ourselves must be extra vigilant, particularly in this day of accelerated technological power, heightened state surveillance, and global corporate reach, that we do not delegate our thinking to others.
Much has been made about the death of the novel and the end of literature as it__ seen to be assailed by technology, by the web, by the many and varied new forms of entertainment and culture. I don__ share that pessimism because I think it is one of the great inventions of the human spirit.
By now, with all our modern technology, there should be no poverty left on earth.
...while the stony bones of the world tore past and the air grew dark and howling. The last thing he saw as the gulley became a torrent of dust and rock was the Jeep, plucked backwards into space.