Re: [unrev-II] Important Quotes

From: Eric Armstrong (eric.armstrong@sun.com)
Date: Fri Oct 19 2001 - 22:35:53 PDT

  • Next message: Jack Park: "[unrev-II] SSSCA and the end of open source software"

    Jack Park wrote:

    > I confess before all who would read this, and, as they say, the front
    > page of the NY Times, that I was a lousy student until I entered grad
    > school. One size just didn't fit this writer.

    Pretty much the same here.

    College was good for teaching me how to be disciplined about studying,
    though.
    And that was a useful thing to learn.

    I was a big fan of Summerhill. The guy figured out that a kid could
    screw around
    and have fun for 11 years, then buckle down for two (as a much more
    mature
    teenager) and learn enough to pass college entrance examinations and
    become
    a decent engineer. So why force kids to march in lock step for 11 years,
    when
    they could be pursuing their passion, whatever it was?

    (Of course, most students screwed around for a month or two before they
    got
    bored and started going to classes. But even in this hard core example,
    the
    results were great.)

    Then, too, I am fond of noting that an aborigine spends 2 hours a day
    providing
    for his/her needs. Now, granted their needs are a lot less. But when
    does
    "civilization" become a thinly-disguised version of slavery, made all
    the more
    poignant by the fact that we appear to "choose" it?

    It is for that reason that I am a big fan of a social "safety net". It
    should be
    possible to live, and get by, with very little effort. If you lived in
    spartan
    surroundings -- yet still had the chance to pursue your passion,
    whatever it
    may be, then I think a lot of good would come out of such a program.

    The trick, of course, is to figure out a way that someone living in
    otherwise
    spartan surroundings has the means for doing whatever it is they want to

    be doing -- writing a program, building a boat, learning to dance, or
    whatever.
    But if a way can be found to do these things, then possibly people can
    be at
    once happier, and likely far more productive, than ever before in
    history.

    These be but utopian dreams -- but I have never quite given up on the
    master
    plan I dreamed up in college. I figured I would need to encasulate it in
    three
    books:
       * One on the nature of utopia -- how a reasonably utopian
    civilization
          could be devised.
       * One on the nature of power and charisma -- how one manages to
          change a society
       * One on a simulation of the current state of the world, with a
    roadmap
          leading from there to the utopian vision.

    Thirty-some years later, I confess to being someone stymied on chapter
    one
    of the first book! But it is still a dream.

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