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Portable Ideas

raganwald.posterous.com

1–10 of 46 posts

Re: Portable Ideas

#2
Good points.

What does you mother think of this? I'd like to know her take on it, because she is an amazing example of someone who lives in the edge of the bubble. A black woman who became a programmer during the times when there were no women or blacks can put some insight into how to build portable ideas.

Re: Portable Ideas

#4
I thought this article sounded familiar but it took me a while to place it. It's the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:3-8.

3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;

4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:

5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:

6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

7 And some fell among athorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:

8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

Re: Portable Ideas

#6
I will have to disagree. Or rather, I think that while some bubble are pretty closed, some are very permeable. I'll take Hacker News for example.

Although some people complain about the fact that there are strong biases on HN, I actually think that it is not that bad, and there are plenty of topics on which the community is divided (on top of my mind: internet piracy is acceptable vs bad, windows is a good tool vs it sucks, google is evil vs it is awesome, linux will never be a good desktop environment vs it will, etc..).

I think that there is a distinction between bubbles that are created around certain opinions (windows is bad + piracy is good + linux rocks) and bubbles that are organized around values (I disagree with you but I like debating with you + I like to learn about different subjects + etc..).

Re: Portable Ideas

#7
Fundamental ideas are portable ideas. Lisp didn't start out as a programming language. It was an abstract model of computation. As an ex-Symbolics employee friend of mine says, "Math never goes out of style."

Eschew what's popular and what gets attention. Seek the fundamental instead. This is the difference between learning about Ruby because Rails is the current big thing versus knowing enough to be interested in Ruby because it embodies the objects+messages model and you find that beautiful. (And if you value the objects+messages model because it was a big thing in academia at some point, you are still missing the point!)

Programming has many of the features of "pop-culture" because the rate of change in the field is faster than the rate of actual progress. Learn in-depth the actual progress.

EDIT: Switched the positions of fundamental and portable, since fundamental => portable.

Re: Portable Ideas

#9
Sounds to me like a cognitive escape velocity. An idea needs a certain amount just to get out of your head, and an even larger velocity to get out of the 'bubble.' People encountering the idea can either increase or decrease its velocity, like booster rockets. Now, I wonder if the escape velocity of a given bubble, or the current velocity of a given idea are measurable in any meaningful way, so that we could act to change them?

Re: Portable Ideas

#10

Sounds to me like a cognitive escape velocity. An idea needs a certain amount just to get out of your head, and an even larger velocity to get out of the 'bubble.' People encountering the idea can either increase or decrease its velocity, like booster rockets. Now, I wonder if the escape velocity of a given bubble, or the current velocity of a given idea are measurable in any meaningful way, so that we could act to c…

Love the concept of "cognitive escape velocity" - a perfect example of a portable idea that spans psychology, physics and social media!
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