Umberto Eco on Macintosh vs. DOS

[DemBones DemBones]

Umberto Eco on Macintosh vs. DOS (or why Macs are Catholic)

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the "ratio studiorum" of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven - the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counterreformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions.....

And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is Talmudic and cabalistic.


From an English translation of Umberto Eco's back-page column, "La bustina di Minerva," in the weekly Espresso (30 September 1994).

If you never ran DOS back in the day, this may not amuse you, but he describes the differences between Mac and DOS very well, and the differences between Catholic and Protestant as well. He is himself an agnostic who thinks it would be arrogant to say that there is no God.

Does he use a Mac or a PC? I don't know, but I'm a Mac-using Catholic who ran DOS on a PC many years ago, back before so many sites charged for access, before pop-up ads, before viruses, before spam. I think religious analogies could be drawn to all those. Sites charging for access = televangelism, pop-up ads = religious billboards and television ads, viruses = also television ads, spam = pushy door to door evangelists. If they're not pushy, perhaps they're e-mails.

You computer programmers can probably come up with better analogies so let's hear them. Eco hit on an interesting way of examining religion in technological terms that we can play with.

[rug]

1. I disagree. Using DOS is purgatory, which Protestants reject.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. . . .

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Yes, I remember DOS all too well and it was rather like Purgatory, though having done my thesis before computers were readily available, I think that experience was more like Purgatory. Or Hell. :shrug:

But I was raised Presbyterian, with a couple of years of Baptist Sunday School with friends, and think it's Calvinistic in the ways he suggested. YMMV.