From db6ec3f820c7abb0220a57c9f9146c367b474317 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Chris Hodapp Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2018 23:26:31 -0500 Subject: [PATCH] Another draft post --- drafts/2017-01-08-retrospect-foresight.org | 43 ++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 43 insertions(+) create mode 100644 drafts/2017-01-08-retrospect-foresight.org diff --git a/drafts/2017-01-08-retrospect-foresight.org b/drafts/2017-01-08-retrospect-foresight.org new file mode 100644 index 0000000..42af75b --- /dev/null +++ b/drafts/2017-01-08-retrospect-foresight.org @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: Retrospect on Foresight +author: Chris Hodapp +date: January 8, 2018 +tags: technobabble, rambling +--- + +/(Spawned from some idle thoughts around the summer of 2015.)/ + +Why are old technological ideas that were "ahead of their time", but +which lost out to other ideas, worth studying? + +We can see them as raw ideas that "modern" understanding never +refined - as misguided fantasies or just mistakes, even. The flip +side of this is that we can see them as ideas that are free of the +modern preconceptions that are now nearly inescapable. + +In some of these visionaries is a valuable combination: + +- a detachment from this context (by mere virtue of it not existing + yet), +- the ability to imagine and analyze far beyond the preconceptions + that in turn surrounded them, +- the resources and freedom to actually apply this, +- the foresight and sometimes blind luck to have communicated their + thoughts, feelings, and analysis in a durable way. + +To put it in another way: They gave us analysis in a context that no +longer even exists. They help us think beyond our current context. +They help us answer a question, "What if we took a different path +then?" + +* Scratch + +- Douglas Engelbart is perhaps one of the canonical examples of a person + who was an endless source of these ideas. Ted Nelson arguably is + another. Alan Turing is an early example widely regarded for his + foresight. +- [[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/][As We May Think (Vannevar Bush)]] +- However, to quote [[http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html][epigram #53]] from Alan Perlis, "So many good ideas + are never heard from again once they embark in a voyage on the + semantic gulf." +- "Do you remember a time when..." only goes so far.