Society Archives - Page 10 of 26 - Home For Fiction

Society

No Ads, no Corporate Masters

September 5, 2022

art, capitalism, home for fiction, knowledge, society

The phrase of the title, “No Ads, no Corporate Masters”, is of course a wordplay on “No Gods, no Masters”. It’s also a phrase I use on Home for Fiction, for example whenever you try to access any of the apps (we’ll talk about this more in a moment) .

It’s a way for me to remind you that Home for Fiction displays no ads, and it’s controlled by nobody.

But why all this? Why do I refuse to put ads on Home for Fiction? The short answer is, for the same reason I’ve refused corporate masters (and as you’ll discover in this post, I’ve had many such… suitors): Because I can’t compromise on what Home for Fiction is – in terms of content as well as aesthetics.

The longer answer is something I decided to write this post about.

Note: Years have passed, and certain things have changed regarding Home for Fiction. I’ve tried really hard to make things my way, moving in an increasingly more artistic and less materialistic direction. For instance, I tried various ways of keeping the Home for Fiction apps free, but people abused the offers. I am officially defeated. My idea of keeping them free turned out to be naive, and I simply can’t afford to pay for the server resources required. I only wanted to make apps I liked, that’s it.

Everything below this point should be seen as a snapshot of history and might not reflect current reality.

no ads no corporate masters — “No ads, no corporate masters” can be both lonely and liberating. There are no shortcuts – you can be either free or content; being both is impossible

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My 48K Challenge: A Programming Lesson on Creativity

June 13, 2022

Programming, Society

creativity, javascript, nostalgia, patience, programming, society, video games

There are all sorts of asinine challenges in the ocean of mediocrity that is social media, and let me assure you, this isn’t one of them. My “48K challenge” is something I came up with when I noticed something disturbing on my “smart” phone: The size of the calculator app is 8MB. That of the alarm clock is 19MB. And my personal favorite, the messages app (just SMS, that is) is a whooping 204MB.

Are these people serious?

When I was a kid, you could pack an entire video game in 48KB. In other words, the space the calculator app requires is the equivalent of more than 165 video games for the ZX Spectrum – my first computer.

It goes without saying that technology has advanced a lot; the games of the 80s can’t be technically compared to those we have today. And yet, it feels programming has become sloppy.

I’m of course generalizing, but it feels as if the more the resources we have, the less the creativity and the greater our laziness. It all leads to resource hogs that take too much space and are often buggy. Because, hey, let’s all keep updating all the time.

And so, I gave myself what I termed the 48K challenge. I decided to make a retro-style video game in JavaScript, that had to be 48KB or less. The results were intriguing and revealing – and a little bit disappointing, but not in the way you imagine.

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What Is Anthropocentrism: Examples, Problems, Solutions

March 14, 2022

Philosophy, Society

anthropocentrism, fallacy, ignorance, philosophy, society

Many of us think they’re individually the center of the universe. The irony is, they might be right, but that’s a discussion for another day. The same concept in a wider context is called anthropocentrism. In simple terms, anthropocentrism is the assumption that humans are the most important entities in the universe.

The problem is not so much the belief itself. After all, many of us would likely consider the possibility that other life forms exist in the universe. Probably many of us would also consider the possibility that alien life forms not only exist but are as or even more intelligent than we are.

So, is anthropocentrism “a thing”? Does it really exist?

The question is yes, indirectly. And that’s what makes it insidious. In other words, the true danger of anthropocentrism arises from the fact that it’s subconscious: We’re often not aware we express anthropocentric behavior. That is, we might state we don’t think humans are the center of the universe, we might really believe it, too, yet we act and think as if we were.

So let’s take a look at what anthropocentrism really is, together with examples of anthropocentric behavior. We’ll see what kind of problems such behavior produces, and what some possible solutions could be.

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