Culture Is Important

An engineer friend once said “aesthetics are important”, in relation to machines not being merely mechanical in their features but also needing to be useful to humans. This means that a machine has to look/feel useful for us to understand it’s purpose and a machine should not be obstructive to human needs.

But more generally culture is important, a machine needs to fit culturally into it’s surroundings and I think that’s the real problem with modern operating systems. They fit into a kind of California & Washington oriented culture that probably isn’t that relevant even for American audiences.

I’m a vi guy but not in it’s original cultural sense, I’m a hacker but not in it’s true American-vs-Russian form, I’m a Mac guy but not a fan of Apple, I’m a DOS guy but I want nothing to do with Microsoft, I’m a TempleOS guy but I oppose the religion of the schizophrenics. We culturally become part of the machine and if we don’t direct this culture ourselves we end up as second-class citizens.

So am I developing an operating system for myself, or for Australians, or for Africans, Irish, etc.? Am I developing an operating system for the real hackers, for the 1337357? Am I developing an operating system for the old or for the young, for the most disabled or for the most able?

I guess I intend to develop an operating system for those who value security, and for those who enjoy tinkering and learning, and it is very much inspired by Egyptian political thought that I don’t want ourselves and the rest of Africa and the Palestinians and the Iraqis etc. to be treated as outsiders everywhere.

I guess the main defining feature of my operating system is that it’s my operating system, and doesn’t belong to anyone who wants us excluded from the industry.