Reminder that Orwell has an exclusively anti-Stallin grudge and that 1984 barley qualifies as science fiction. Issac Asimov wrote a scathing review in the 80s.
Apple Envy
Submitted 1 day ago by xia@lemmy.sdf.org to [deleted]
https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/0feab4f8-53c6-4570-925b-3976f6ae68e5.png
Comments
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
anti stalin grudge
Which he picked up from a soviet commisar while fighting fascists in the 30s in spain. Known for his talent with grenades. Suffered sone pretty severe injuries.
pro british imperialism
Okay so i don’t know everything abput the man but did you read his account of being a colonialist shitbag ‘on the occasion of the killing of an elephant’? It’s not a fucking endorsement.
not SCIENCE fiction
Sure, yeah, psychology and sociology don’t count. Le’guinn never wrote a scifi novel.
It’s the lasers and rocket ships that make the stories good, not the new relations and forms of person and society rgat they enable stories of. Obviously.
talking about how he sucked as a person to criticize an idea an author expressed, then citing asimov
So do you hate women and think rape is fine and asimov was just a cool guy, or are you the dumb kind of tankie who never learned to think for yourself and just repeats shit to sound smart without knowing what any of it means?
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 10 hours ago
Even on a literary level, asimov had some great ideas and concepts, but the actual writing isn’t particularly gripping stuff.
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
I don’t know why people write these emotionally charged comments that are dripping with sarcasm. Your entire comment is a series of strawman misrepresentations that you’ve erected to unceremoniously “dunk” on the opposition instead of actually arguing with any nuance. You give one piece of evidence in your favor and conclude that you’ve had the final say on the matter. This sort of discourse boils down to “You’re an idiot!” … “No, YOU are!!”
My point is that Orwell is more anti-Stallin than pro-leftist. People on the left think many be tempted to interpret Orwell as arguing against right-wing fascism. But he is arguably arguing that left-wing politics is fascistic. This explains why our governments are so quick to hail 1984 as some literary achievement. In reality, the novel slows to a crawl in the middle and is not inventive at all; especially when compared to the great works of science fiction such as The Time Machine, The Dispossessed, Roadside Picnic, Necromancer, etc. (Manual surveillance of millions of people through their TVs? Seriously? 1984 is not fit to be compared with any of Ursula Le Guin’s works. As a fan of the genre, I question whether you actually read science fiction at all.)
By the tone of your comment I can see that you’re pretty entrenched in your position and don’t care about Orwell’s character or motivations. Everyone else can make up their own minds:
kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Are we seriously going to pretend that Google hasn’t been just as evil for years now? At least Apple is able to provide a halfway-decent UX…
Mindlight@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Google was only pro freedom and open source as long as it hurt Microsoft more than them.
That is not the case anymore.
Heavybell@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Ugh, hard disagree on apple UX.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
Dont defend either of them please.
If there were any alternative, we wouldn’t have these problems.
Demdaru@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Most of lemmings are technicals: where alternative? Build LemmyOS xD
blitzen@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
What I’ll say in Apples defense is they largely are what they say they are. You may not like what Apple provides, which is fair, but at least you know what you’re getting.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
I mean the reason Apple AI sucks is because they violated their users privacy way less than Google, which is, good? I guess?
kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I fully agree with that sentiment, for what it’s worth. Apple is authoritarian but at least they’re mostly transparent about it.
xia@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Splitting detected.
Are we seriously going to pretend that a single person can be wholly evil? Much less a company of 200k people.
Even if Google takes this huge step of requiring their blessing for every Android developer (which Apple has ALWAYS had on their side), they will still be better (by my estimation) along the freedom dimension than Apple. Maybe too far removed for my involvement, but better nonetheless. For example, one interesting metric may be the number of useful open source projects they publish.
Korne127@lemmy.world 1 day ago
On privacy, google is much worse
Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
they’re only good to the extent that they’re forced to be by the GPL
kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Fair, but I think that while Apple is generally more authoritarian with regard to developer experience, they’re less user-hostile overall and generally strike a good (at least compared to the current alternatives) balance between freedom, privacy, and usability for most people.
I think Google (and Silicon Vally writ large) is coming to terms with the fact that past a certain size userbase, authoritarianism is necessary to maintain control, consistency, and (very importantly) safety… where Apple has pretty much always embraced it; for better or worse.
I could easily turn this into a larger critique about society and governance, federated republics being necessary in the long-term versus corporate monoliths, and the “10x everything” culture being the root of the new tech-right, but I will digress, lol.