Am I a user or a techie?

[forrestcupp]

Power user is a good title.

But let's face it. To the majority of the world, just the fact that you're on a Linux forum makes you an ultra geek.

(unless you're a grandma whose grandson secretly installed Ubuntu on your computer, and he put a shortcut to this forum on your desktop so you could come here and desperately plea for help. )

[cloyd]

Power user is a good title.

But let's face it. To the majority of the world, just the fact that you're on a Linux forum makes you an ultra geek.

(unless you're a grandma whose grandson secretly installed Ubuntu on your computer, and he put a shortcut to this forum on your desktop so you could come here and desperately plea for help. )

Yeah, I guess you're right on that one, too.
Linux . . . gee . . .

[benpack101]

Labels are only as important as you make them. If you find no importance in them, then they are of no importance. If on the other hand you care, then it matters. As long as you know how you are defining, "techie" and "user" then go ahead and define yourself as whatever you please (just be able to backup/define why you call yourself what you say you are)

[cloyd]

Labels are only as important as you make them. If you find no importance in them, then they are of no importance. If on the other hand you care, then it matters. As long as you know how you are defining, "techie" and "user" then go ahead and define yourself as whatever you please (just be able to backup/define why you call yourself what you say you are)

I seem to remember someone called Kyorscyki (that is not spelled right . . . I probably can't say it right) and General Semantics. He warned about the danger of labeling. Yes, labels can be limiting. Yet, they are also part of language to help us talk to each other and know what the other is talking about. I am much more than a power user or techie or geek or simply a user. Whats more, what I am today, I may not be tomorrow. But if I want to explain to someone else my degree of knowledge and the degree to which I am willing to tinker, experiment and tweak and risk breaking, having the right label helps.

I remember a psychotherapist named Albert Ellis who recommended (in the interest of avoiding labels) that we speak and write without ever using any form or the verb "to be." It is an interesting experiment. I tried writing a few papers with this idea, and it resulted in very active rather than passive language . . . which can be a good thing. Instructors liked it, but I don't know that they ever noticed that "to be" never appeared.

However, such an approach can limit expression. Certain philosophical concepts can not be expressed. Those who support this idea say no big deal . . . the concepts that can't be expressed without "to be" are false and that is why they can't be expressed. It sounds like a tautology to me.

Kind of a fun discussion . . . if I didn't get so deep that no one wants to talk to me again.

[Copper Bezel]

They're both mentioned in the Wikipedia article on E-Prime (the idea of using English without "to be" you mentioned.) Thus, rather than "I am a power user," you'd say something like "I fall into the category of power users" or somesuch.

Identity can be implied without use of being verbs, though. It seems like a fun exercise, but ultimately it just seems to be a way of reminding the writer to qualify statements, much like avoiding the passive voice. (The passive voice allows for actions without actors; the verb of being allows for observations without observers.) If you instead take the qualification itself to be the goal, though, there's a potential for infinite recursion, since every statement could be further qualified.

I don't understand how any meaningful philosophical or other concept would be literally impossible to state under such circumstances, and the verb of being certainly is acts as a shorthand. = ) Avoiding it seems less like an overall statement about reality and more like an attempt to make common errors of logic inconvenient.

Oh, on topic: I prefer "enthusiast." = )

[F.G.]

interesting thread. i have no idea what i am, though i sometimes use the word "enthusiast" though i have been called a techie and a geek.

i wonder if wittgenstein's private language argument is relevant here (basically that you can't define a term entirely and exclusively yourself, as, if it isn't common to other people you have no way of knowing if you are using it correctly). it's not directly relevant because the terms in question are widely used, but i feel that there is a certain sense to the idea that labeling oneself is fairly pointless and the principal value of label is for you to label other people, and for them to label you.

i've had loads of labels (eg nicknames, job titles, qualifications etc.), i guess most have been accurate(ish).

[Bandit]

/thread

[cloyd]

They're both mentioned in the Wikipedia article on E-Prime (the idea of using English without "to be" you mentioned.) Thus, rather than "I am a power user," you'd say something like "I fall into the category of power users" or somesuch.

Identity can be implied without use of being verbs, though. It seems like a fun exercise, but ultimately it just seems to be a way of reminding the writer to qualify statements, much like avoiding the passive voice. (The passive voice allows for actions without actors; the verb of being allows for observations without observers.) If you instead take the qualification itself to be the goal, though, there's a potential for infinite recursion, since every statement could be further qualified.

I don't understand how any meaningful philosophical or other concept would be literally impossible to state under such circumstances, and the verb of being certainly is acts as a shorthand. = ) Avoiding it seems less like an overall statement about reality and more like an attempt to make common errors of logic inconvenient.

Oh, on topic: I prefer "enthusiast." = )

Yes, it was E-Prime. And I see . . . yes I did express the concept of being. (being itself, ground of being and such were concepts I was thinking of). Exist. Existence. There are other words that will do. Errors of logic. It is not the essence of who I am that I am an enthusiast. However, sometimes I do exhibit the quality of enthusiasm about Ubuntu and Linux.

And again, on topic, I like enthusiast too.

[tersogar]

I like enthusiast too, even thou my wife said that I am a computer wizard, the kids call me it guy and friends said that I´m a geek.

[BrokenKingpin]

I don't like being locked out of the machine. Does that make me a techie?

I don't really think so, especially with how much technology is being used by everyone these days. You may be leaning more towards a power user though.

That being said I suppose it depends on the definition of "Techie". As stated above, as time goes on I think the definition changes, as most people growing up now technology is a huge part of their life, where that wasn't the case 15 years ago (not to this extent anyways). I guess there may be different levels of "techies" though.

I would consider myself a techie, as I work in the IT field professionally (programmer), and most of my hobbies are related to computers and technology (building computers, software development, etc.).