I understand what you're saying, Steve, and I respect you for doing things your way. However, the practical engineer in me wants to scream whenever someone reinvents stupid ways to do things. Right now, one of my biggest concerns is that smartphone apps are reinventing all of the stupid vulnerabilities that have been hammered out of web-servers (not that web-servers don't still have stupid vulnerabilities - just not the same ones). Smart meters are reinventing all of the same stupid vulnerabilities that cable boxes have. I suppose it's the difference between the engineering mindset and the scientific mindset.
Long ago, when I was working on a satellite project, one of the young scientists decided to build his own serial stack from the ground up. Even in the early '90s, serial protocol stacks were building blocks available in standard libraries for PCs. This curiosity and the time delay inherent to relearning all of the lessons of the previous thirty years meant the project was at risk of failure from delay. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: [email protected] SIPR: [email protected] (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: [email protected] (send NIPR reminder) On Feb 18, 2014, at 11:52 AM, Steve Smith wrote: > Marcus - > > My father, for better or worse, wanted/needed huge swaths of well traveled > territory to learn within. He went from Boy Scouts to Navy to College to > Civil Service, wearing uniforms much of that time, and learning (by rote) the > many standard forms they presented. It made him feel safe, it let him be > useful/performing in places he otherwise might not have. > > Somehow that sent me in an opposite direction, appreciating the core tools, > formalisms, methodologies not as an end, but as a means or more to the point, > a beginning, a point of departure. > > As I matured, I *did* discover that I was in fact often/usually (re)inventing > as I went and as you so aptly point out, I'm thankful for having done so... > the things I was "given" were never mine in the way the things I "created" or > "discovered" were. We are a curious species and maintaining/feeding that > curiosity seems to be an important part of our nature. > > I would say my father's curiosity was limited to exploring a vast landscape > of things already laid out for him while mine was to blunder around in > wildernesses often of my own making, only to discover that I was actually > inside of a park so well groomed that at times it felt to be a wilderness... > early on, I resented discovering that my "inventions" were really > "re-discoveries" but at some point, I began to appreciate that with some of > them I was adding valuable nuances too. >>> So rather than "knowing the names of the turtles all the way down", I got >>> to/had to make up names for them as I met them, and only later discover >>> that they had been named many times already. >> It seems to me the folks that are given the names don't value the names. >> Clearly there is value in standard language for technical communication, but >> harder for me to imagine being taught something but otherwise having no >> intuition for it. I guess that's what many people expect, though? >> >> Marcus > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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