What's with a lot of the mentions of “computer” using what looks like a portmanteau with “retard”?! I know some famous people like Stallman do this, but I don't think it's perceived positively.
Provide a link to Stallman using that term then please? Otherwise, I'm calling nonsense. I'd be 95+% sure you're making that up, or confused in this case.
I didn't mean to be nasty - I was, apparently, misunderstanding OP's original message. In my defense, the causal link between these three things:
1. Person A in their blog appears to be using a weird portmanteau, "computard"
2. "Some famous people like Stallman do this" (referring to portmanteaus, and making up words, in general, and not the specific portmanteau person A used)
3. "People" maybe don't perceive that positively (making up portmanteaus..?)
is more than a bit hard to follow.
Anyway, I thought an obviously false claim was being made, but if it's just a few loose amalgamations and people brandishing their opinions about, well that's fine, it is the internet, after all.
I think that if you filter-out the exaggerations in the article, the general message is still worth to reflect on. Some process doesn't get more efficient just by virtue of using a computer, and many tools we have now are more about good-looking interfaces than actual productivity.
Not only that, but a lot of the efficiency gains are directed towards tasks that, otherwise, would not be done because it wasn’t worth the cost. Now that the cost is low enough, their marginal gains absorb the resources that’s be freed by automation.
He states, in his about[0]: "...exposing this sort of nonsense to as much popular contempt as I can muster."
It's deliberate.
I sometimes enjoy folks that write like this, and this chap genuinely seems to be an interesting guy, after my own heart, but I don't really enjoy his writing.