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> "A sound separated from a sounding body was just sort of a conceptual leap," she says. "I'm not sure people had the cultural context to invent this stuff." I

> "A sound separated from a sounding body was just sort of a conceptual leap," she says. "I'm not sure people had the cultural context to invent this stuff." It makes one wonder what currently isn't being invented simply because it doesn't fit into our conceptual framework. We have a somewhat more rich framework now than people did in the 19th century, of course, but the number of things we have to play with- computers, genomes, brain scans, rockets- has also gotten much larger and more complicated.

EGreg 9y ago
Dark matter is the new ether, perhaps, waiting for its Einstein?
ademarre 9y ago
> It makes one wonder what currently isn't being invented simply because it doesn't fit into our conceptual framework. It's fun to think up thought exercises to try and help break out of our conceptual framework. On a smaller scale, an approach I've played around with is taking attributes of existing technologies that have certain things in common, then diagramming them in different ways and looking for holes. As a concrete example, let's go back to 2005. You might reason that e-mails and blog posts are both kinds of written messages, however blogs have an open audience, while e-mails are sent to specific recipients, so a closed audience. Separately, you might compare e-mails to text messages, and realize that they are very similar, but one is long form while the other is short form. You can draw this as a table: | short form | long form | -+------------+-----------+ open | ??? | blogs | -+------------+-----------| closed | SMS texts | e-mail | -+------------+-----------+ Now try to figure out what fits in the missing box (short form, open). It's Twitter! (Or even better, decentralized micro blogging.)
- Nition 9y ago
  Hey I've got one of those: | Short-term discussion | Ongoing discussion | -+-----------------------+--------------------+ Admins create subforums | Digg/Old Reddit | Forums | -+-----------------------+--------------------| Users create subforums | Reddit | ??? | -+-----------------------+--------------------+
  - ademarre 9y ago
    Stack Overflow?

EGreg 9y ago

Dark matter is the new ether, perhaps, waiting for its Einstein?

ademarre 9y ago

> It makes one wonder what currently isn't being invented simply because it doesn't fit into our conceptual framework. It's fun to think up thought exercises to try and help break out of our conceptual framework. On a smaller scale, an approach I've played around with is taking attributes of existing technologies that have certain things in common, then diagramming them in different ways and looking for holes. As a concrete example, let's go back to 2005. You might reason that e-mails and blog posts are both kinds of written messages, however blogs have an open audience, while e-mails are sent to specific recipients, so a closed audience. Separately, you might compare e-mails to text messages, and realize that they are very similar, but one is long form while the other is short form. You can draw this as a table: | short form | long form | -+------------+-----------+ open | ??? | blogs | -+------------+-----------| closed | SMS texts | e-mail | -+------------+-----------+ Now try to figure out what fits in the missing box (short form, open). It's Twitter! (Or even better, decentralized micro blogging.)

Nition 9y ago
Hey I've got one of those: | Short-term discussion | Ongoing discussion | -+-----------------------+--------------------+ Admins create subforums | Digg/Old Reddit | Forums | -+-----------------------+--------------------| Users create subforums | Reddit | ??? | -+-----------------------+--------------------+
- ademarre 9y ago
  Stack Overflow?