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Just came across Bumptop, an awesome innovation by Anand Agarawala. Here’s a guy willing to rethink the way we view computing, he’s willing to challenge a status quo that a lot of people blindly accept. Really cool innovation. Can’t wait for it to come out.
On a similar note, here’s something I’ve been eagerly anticipating for quite long: Symphony OS.
Without people like these, society and technology won’t progress. And I really admire them for what they’re doing.
People love tips. A list of tips is the easiest way to make the front page of Digg, attract dozens of back links, and acquire hordes of RSS subscribers. The tips don’t even need to be new or insightful, they just need to make sense and cover an interesting topic. Who doesn’t enjoy useful information in an easily digestible format?
The problem with tips is that they’re too delicious. People become obsessed with prepackaged information nuggets and stop thinking for themselves. When an article focuses on theory, no matter how brilliant it is, people complain that the information isn’t “useful”. The definition of “useful” has become so narrow that it only includes information that applies directly to a concrete problem. This reluctance to master and apply conceptual knowledge is a symptom of intellectual laziness.
I think in today’s world, people are just too rushed to think by themselves. We are trained from young to focus on the results, through the formal education system, and because of that, “theory” isn’t that well liked, because it has no immediate results. Even in school, where the main aim is supposed to be learning, you find students clamoring for tips in order to do well in their exams.
In a society where the immediacy is so highly valued, ideas or articles that don’t give immediate results aren’t sought after. As Chris Honore said in his TED Talk, “Even things which are by their very nature slow, we try to speed them up too.”
Learning, the pursuit of knowledge, is a slow process. It comes with trying and failing. It comes with taking the time to question things. The world, and life as well, is complex, and it takes time to think through things. Speeding it up won’t work.
Always suspect the superficial and the easy. Deliberately keeping it simple makes people stupid. The universe is a complex and surprising place. Great ideas can’t be reduced to sound-bites and slogans. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value. Snake-oil salesmen and con-artists have always offered really simple, easy ways to achieve things people know are tough and complicated. Why do people still buy? Laziness and greed, mostly. Wanting something for nothing. If you want to grow and develop your creativity, as in just about everything else, there are no free lunches.
In our rush for speed, we have to be careful not to oversimplify things. If we do, creativity won’t grow.
Trying to define what true potential means is really a quest that is more a distraction from defining what society really wants or expects. It would be more fruitful to simply focus initially on what society wants as its potential for you, or from you, give it what it’s asking for to get its approval. Then develop your talents for your own sake, through an individual search for self realization, rather than spending a lifetime wondering whether you have lived up to what you think your true potential should be.
I agree with the second half the paragraph. But well, personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to focus on “what society wants” from you. The problem with doing that is, it becomes very easy to just slip into what society wants and not move from there.
To truly develop your potential, you shouldn’t focus on what society wants or try to “get its approval”, in my opinion. You need to be willing to risk society’s disapproval. If not, you’ll end up just falling into the status quo.
The sad part is, I can’t help but think she’s right. And though I do understand the value of simplicity, the fact that even blogging is moving to a short message style reflects a disheartening aspect of our culture today: the relentless pursuit of speed.
Imagine if books or magazine articles or newspapers move towards that. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? So why should blogging move in that direction? Blogging is about writing, sharing your opinions and thoughts. It shouldn’t become a “short message stye” thing.
Has society really come to a point where in our pursuit of speed, we are unwilling to take time out to read and write our ideas; where we are too rushed to slow down and share new thoughts? I really hope not.
If there are only so many hours in a day, and so much effort I can exert, I have to choose how to spend my time and exert my efforts. Should I keep my energy diffuse? Great. I’ll dimly light a big wide swath of space. If I choose to focus, I have a laser. Swell to be a nightlight to many different pursuits, but probably more useful to be a laser, don’t you agree?
History suggests that the challenge will not be easily overcome. The promise of computing with a pen has led to some of the best-known failures in Silicon Valley’s history, including Apple’s hand-held Newton, and the Go Corporation. Go was a pioneering pen computer company that attracted some of the technology industry’s most famous executives, spent $75 million of the investors’ money and ended up with little to show for it.
And while pen computing has finally gained a degree of acceptance with consumers through devices like the Palm line of personal digital assistants and tablet PCs, those remain niche products, not the general-purpose machines that some pen computer pioneers envisioned.
Mr. Marggraff is familiar with this history, and that, in part, is why he has turned the very notion of pen computing on its head.
Pen computing is a dream that many technologists have tried and failed. And yet, this toy executive seems to have succeeded.
And how did he do it? By challenging the whole concept of what pen computing is. He did it by trying something new, by thinking in new ways.
June 6, 2007 
Posted in Moved from Blogger 
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