[KS] Mac, Microsoft, HWP

[Frank Hoffmann]

Thanks Ross:

Your points are, as always, well taken. 
Just to clarify: this handicap with the last two new Mac OS versions, 
and also the limitations with the older ones (last paragraph in your 
posting) are not any inherent, systemic shortcomings per se in the 
overall setup of how the various version of the OS work (or better, 
should work if fixed). At its base these are (in earlier versions) 
decisions deriving from zero interest in creating a "fixed" framework 
that allows applications to make appropriate use of Unicode encoding 
for Korean (including the possibility to use medieval and early modern 
orthography). And in case of the last and this forthcoming OS, this has 
come tots extreme -- this is a sign of a COMPLETE disinterest to even 
do a minimal fix (and that's what it would be if being the company 
producing the operating system). It is by no means the case that the 
system as such would be in the way of getting there, it really is just 
a lack of interest.

Some may seriously think all this is JUST some boring technology issue, 
and my old friends from Europe and other theme parks even talk in their 
emails to me about "your Trump" as if that were not just as much their 
Trump. If you look around, there is no place to go, there is no 
Canadian wilderness left anymore. Compared to the 1980s and 1990s 
computers are now produced for a completely different market, a market 
for people who are not into exchanging ideas about the world and how to 
make it a better place. No longer are they the little gadgets of 
ongoing intellectuals. They are EVERYTHING BUT ... And language, well, 
all over language is in recess and limited to a minimum -- especially 
if grammar and full sentences are involved. The visual turn -- indeed, 
we took it! I live in Berkeley, and people under 30 don't even say 
'hello' anymore ... why wasting time saying a word with five, endlessly 
long and complicated letters? Is that any different anywhere else? 
Certainly not. The MONEY is not where the words are! The money is where 
the images are. Apple knows that, and that is how their devices are 
designed, that is their main purpose, short communications, and 
processing, storing, and sharing photos of your dog'a dodo -- and, of 
course, surveillance, customer surveillance, mass surveillance any sort 
of surveillance possible. If you have a close look at the latest and 
soon-to-be-released OS you will note that just absolutely everything 
you do with a device running them, that where you go with it, and even 
what you say around it, gets transferred out in one form or another -- 
already pre-analyzed and packaged and compressed on your own device or 
analyzed later at the data center. Technology truly creates culture 
here, and that is mostly commercial culture (not anymore a culture of 
commerce but true commercial culture) without any filters -- evenly 
understood by the pleb and those who still think they are not. Anything 
else is just some masking -- universities are now masking, cosmetics 
for those who can afford it, while academics become make-up artists 
adding to the entertainment. Everything else is the past. The essence 
of culture has shifted and is outsourced to our data centers. We type 
the smileys, and with our Mac's (or our smartphone's) 'Sri' we now do 
not even need to type them anymore.

I'll love it!

Frank



--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreanstudies.com