John McKown writes:
This article is basically about why Microsoft is better than Linux in
some ways. Linux has too many competing ways to do something whereas
Microsoft is usually monolithic. And "lack of choice" is superior
because choice leads to confusion.
without necessarily subscribing to this view himself.
It is, I think, important to understand that this is issue is not technical:
It is political. In the appendix to his novel 1984 that describes the
Newspeak language George Orwell wrote:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for
the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to
make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when
Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a
heretical thought---that is a thought diverging from the principles of
Ingsoc---should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is
dependent upon words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact
and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could
properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the
possibility of arriving at them by indirect means. This was done partly by
inventing new words but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words . . . Quite
apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of
vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be
dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend
but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly
assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a mini-mum.
Fanatic minimalists always have political agenda; they want to structure
some microcosm so that in it things must be done their way and only their
way.
John Gilmore
Ashland, MA 01721-1817
USA
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