Sorry for the double post, but I thought a bit more info from below the fold of essay would help:
For non-technologists, this is all a black box. That is a great success of technology: all those layers of complexity are entirely hidden and people can use them without even knowing that they exist at all. <snip> That is also why it's so hard for technologists and non-technologists to communicate together: technologists know too much about too many layers and non-technologists know too little about too few layers to be able to establish effective direct communication. <snip> That is why the mainstream press and the general population has talked so much about Steve Jobs' death and comparatively so little about Dennis Ritchie's: Steve's influence was at a layer that most people could see, while Dennis' was much deeper. <snip> Finally, last but not least, that is why our patent system is broken: technology has done such an amazing job at hiding its complexity that the people regulating and running the patent system are barely even aware of the complexity of what they're regulating and running. <snip> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net> wrote: > From HN, a pointer to a delightfully clever essay that would be loved by > Nick and others who are often bewildered by the hacker alphabet soup > of acronyms and buzz words. > > Well, what _does_ happen when you got to a web page? > > https://plus.google.com/112218872649456413744/posts/dfydM2Cnepe > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408597 > > > This has the possibility of a new book that somehow makes it all > reasonably clear. Maybe. > > -- Owen >
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