On the Humble Default

Hugh Pickens sends along Kevin Kelly's paean to the default. "One of the greatest unappreciated inventions of modern life is the default. 'Default' is a technical concept first used in computer science in the 1960s to indicate a preset standard. ... Today the notion of a default has spread beyond computer science to the culture at large. It seems such a small thing, but the idea of the default is fundamental... It's hard to remember a time when defaults were not part of life. But defaults only arose as computing spread; they are an attribute of complex technological systems. There were no defaults in the industrial age. ... The hallmark of flexible technological systems is the ease by which they can be rewired, modified, reprogrammed, adapted, and changed to suit new uses and new users. Many (not all) of their assumptions can be altered. The upside to endless flexibility and multiple defaults lies in the genuine choice that an individual now has, if one wants it. ... Choices materialize when summoned. But these abundant choices never appeared in fixed designs. ... In properly designed default system, I always have my full freedoms, yet my choices are presented to me in a way that encourages taking those choices in time — in an incremental and educated manner. Defaults are a tool that tame expanding choice."

It's not my fault

[cjeze]

response by default

It's not default...

[realnrh]

... of de programming language that your code doesn't compile!

Look at our financial system

[stox]

More and more are taking the choice to default than ever before.

Re:Slashdot defaults

[BikeHelmet]

Oh! I remember my first post. It was all neatly formatted, and then I pressed the Submit button, and it came out as a huge wall of text.

Ahh, good times.

Default is way older

[Opportunist]

We might not have called it that, but default solutions and default products have been around since the invention of mass production. From then on, there was a "default" product, a standard product that works as the default if you didn't order something specifically different.

Hell, even the spanish inquisition had a default verdict.

Re:On a related note

[causality]

Please do not respond to this response.

OK.

Re:Default is way older

[BluBrick]

Hell, even the spanish inquisition had a default verdict.

Well, I didn't expect the spanish inquisition to come up in this context!

Re:Bah-loney

[mapkinase]

"He's just writing for the sake of reading his own words."

That's default motivation for writing.

In fashion everywhere I work

[xcut]

Ever since Lehman Brothers, the default has definitely been making a comeback. Let's see how much money I lost today.

Re:Bollocks

[Deltaspectre]

On the contrary, these houses had traded much of their living space for this thing called a yard. Not to be confused with the measurement, a yard was the area generally unused by the house left grassy.

Default is for wimps...

[yourassOA]

No real geek/nerd would ever even consider using the default settings. Only real men use the default, real geeks use their own settings. Thats why none of their shit works.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Anonymous Coward

[omnichad]

Like the light switch being in the OFF position when it's first installed. Not that you can see it, because the lights are off.

Re:Bah-loney

[stephanruby]

As a French person, I resent what the author is implying. Defau(l)t is a french word. It means "inaction", "failure", or "inactive state". And if anybody invented "inaction", we certainly did. We have prior art. It's part of our cultural heritage. And you guys, you were just lucky that we even taught it to Great Britain in the twelve century, for without that specialized knowledge, that special concept of defaults would never even have arrived in America!!

Re:Default is way older

[Anonymous Coward]

You never expect the spanish inquisition! Kids, learn your pop culture refs.

Re:Bah-loney

[stephanruby]

Heaven's no, that nasty word comes from Old English. We had nothing to do with that one.

Re:Bah-loney

[dtmos]

Are apostrophes misused in French, too?

Re:It's not my fault

[Klistvud]

This race-to-the-first-post is getting tiresome. The Admins should modify their software: by default, every first post should be deleted, so that the 2nd post becomes 1st. Then, the 1st post should be deleted, so that the 2nd post becomes 1st. Then, the 1st post should be deleted, so that the 2nd post becomes 1st. Then...

That would simplify SlashDot and make it more user-friendly, making AJAX and other complex technologies virtually obsolete.

Re:Slashdot defaults

[Sockatume]

Wait, there's a way to automatically parse line breaks?!

Re:tienanmen

[ThrowAwaySociety]

tienanmen
  tienanmen tienanmen tienanmen tienanmen
  here, they may look at it no more, talk freely

Oh, everybody in China knows what Tiananmen Square is. It's a beautiful plaza in Beijing, not secret or forbidden at all. Nice tourist spot. Mao's mausoleum is right next door. You should go there sometime.

And in Tiananmen Square, in 1989, nothing at all happened. Why do you Westerners use that name as if it's some sort of forbidden thing?