st talk

Because we’re infatuated with the stream, infatuated with our own voice, with the argument we’re in, the point we’re trying to make, the people in our circle we’re talking to.

So I go look for a textbook on State and Local Government. Doesn’t exist. So I grab the syllabus and look at what sorts of things need explaining.

And we see that develop into the web as we know it today. A web of “hey this is cool” one-hop links. A web where where links are used to create a conversational trail (a sort of “read this if you want to understand what I am riffing on” link) instead of associations of ideas.

A stunning thing that we forget, but the link here is not part of the author’s intent, but of the reader’s analysis. The majority of links in the memex are made by readers, not writers. On the world wide web of course, only an author gets to determine links.

Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month's efforts could be produced on call.

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends.

Let me summarize. You've got to work on important problems. I deny that it is all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur's ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not important. I found in the early days I had believed `this' and yet had spent all week marching in `that' direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched in the direction I thought was important. It's that easy.

I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow.

a fellow named Clogston. I met him when I was working on a problem with John Pierce's group and I didn't think he had much. I asked my friends who had been with him at school, ``Was he like that in graduate school?'' ``Yes,'' they replied. Well I would have fired the fellow, but J. R. Pierce was smart and kept him on. Clogston finally did the Clogston cable. After that there was a steady stream of good ideas. One success brought him confidence and courage.

it’s the whole culture.

That is to say that a healthy amount of information should be considered as a function of optimal “output,” with the optimal amount of information acting as “input.” The healthiest amount of input enables the most productive and positive output for yourself and your community.

Whole Earth Catalog in 1968,

In many of those in whom by nature intellectual interest is strong, social conditions prevent its adequate realization. Consequently by far the larger number of pupils leave school as soon as they have acquired the rudiments of learning, as soon as they have enough of the symbols of reading, writing, and calculating to be of practical use to them in getting a living.

The entire industrial process stood revealed, from the production on the farm of the raw materials, till the finished article was actually put to use.

Contrast that with an idea that came to me about five years ago. A young man by the name of Brian Chesky came up to me and had this idea that he was going to have an air mattress in his apartment that he rented to people. It would be an air bed and breakfast and I immediately thought: wow, that’s a horrible, horrible idea. Who would want to rent an air mattress out to somebody’s apartment like probably a serial killer?

Beyond that, he went and he studied the history of hotel chains and he found out hotel chains were a relatively new concept. That before hotel chains, people stayed at inns and bed and breakfasts. And that the problem with inns and bed and breakfast were, they were like a box of chocolates. You had no idea what you were going to get — one day you might have something good and the other day you might have marzipan cherry or some weird stuff.

with the internet, we can make every one of those little chocolates in the box transparent and you can know what you’re getting. And then you’d get all the greatness of the bed and breakfast and all the goodness of the hotel chain all in one. And he had figured out that secret and it was an interesting secret, because it wasn’t something everybody knew.

The Deck

A blog by Matthew Siu

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