I would have thought that 'Why do we eat?' would be a higher stage than 'Where do lunch?', but perhaps it is just a matter of taste. Which question seems more civilized may depend upon whether you are a French philosopher facing a plate full of jellied liver, or a film producer facing a starlet.
No, no. First off, its a quote from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Second, the idea is that after one finds how to do something, the next step is to ask why they do it, all existential-like, and finally the people eventually get tired of that and grow fat and stupid. Hence:
And the web interfaces are generally a sign of civilization moving from the 'How can we eat?' stage past the 'Why do we eat?' and straight to the 'Where shall we have lunch?' stage...
Implies that web interfaces are for the weak. This is silly, web interfaces are very froody, and so easy to use, they make an excellent alternative to command-line file editing, in many cases. CCS -- Carlton C. Stedman II, sageman@wpi.edu "To iterate is human, to recurse, divine." -- L. Peter Deutch
On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 12:22:51PM -0400, Carlton C. Stedman II wrote:
I would have thought that 'Why do we eat?' would be a higher stage than 'Where do lunch?', but perhaps it is just a matter of taste. Which question seems more civilized may depend upon whether you are a French philosopher facing a plate full of jellied liver, or a film producer facing a starlet.
No, no. First off, its a quote from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Second, the idea is that after one finds how to do something, the next step is to ask why they do it, all existential-like, and finally the people eventually get tired of that and grow fat and stupid.
Heh, I took a different meaning away from that quote... Adams referred to these stages as 1) Survival, 2) Inquiry, and 3) Sophistication. I don't think sophistication necessarily requires fat and stupid people, but I will agree that decadence and sophistication are often confused.
Hence:
And the web interfaces are generally a sign of civilization moving from the 'How can we eat?' stage past the 'Why do we eat?' and straight to the 'Where shall we have lunch?' stage...
Implies that web interfaces are for the weak. This is silly, web interfaces are very froody, and so easy to use, they make an excellent alternative to command-line file editing, in many cases.
CCS <SNIP>
Not at all, I don't think that web interfaces are for the weak. They are another tool in the toolbox and get used and abused like any other... Frank
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Carlton C. Stedman II -
Frank