Conversation

"Everything had terms then. The modem sang its negotiation out loud, and that shriek was two machines arguing about how to speak to each other, and after enough times you could hear when the argument was going south and the call was about to drop. You set little jumpers on drives with your fingernail. You knew which interrupt your sound card answered to, because if you guessed wrong it answered to nothing. The machine was made of edges and you cut yourself on them, and that is how you found out where they were.

This might sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not.

The difficulty was the knowledge. You came to know that machine the way you come to know anything that pushes back. The resistance was the whole medium. You only ever know the things that you can lose to.

...

And a machine that cannot challenge you is a thing you cannot know. You can only use it."

absolutely brilliant, via @jbz

https://unix.foo/posts/last-people-who-know-how-it-works/