4 ms·

The internet turns the whole world into a village. That means your "next door neighboor" is hundreds, even thousands, of people. Hard to compete against that.

by Swizec 8y ago

The internet turns the whole world into a village. That means your "next door neighboor" is hundreds, even thousands, of people. Hard to compete against that. Our natural impulse, for a certain kind of person, is to be the best that you know. But when you know thousands? oof

whatshisface 8y ago
Specialize enough and you can do it.
acqq 8y ago
Even before today's internet the famous "geniuses" existed and what they were able to do was not achievable by the ("untrained" or "untalented") mortals. There are so many examples, but I'll take just one which is, as far as I understand, indisputable: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/bobby-fisher-playing-50-opponents-simultaneously-hollywood-hotel-1964/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/bobby-fisher-playing-50-opp... "At age 20, Fischer won the 1963–64 U.S. Championship with 11/11, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament." My programming favorite is definitely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 Knuth writes an ALGOL compiler for Burroughs in 1960. "don claimed that he could write the compiler and a language manual all by himself during his three and a half month summer vacation. He said that he would do it for $5000." "it was taking mortal human beings 25 man-years to write compilers: not three and a half man-months." "The machine had 4080 words of memory." He did it. During the summer of 1960, receiving the computer time as the "third" (after the payroll tasks and when the people developing Fortran compiler didn't need a computer). "he had been working all summer from cards" (punched cards -- for this time a normal condition: he didn't have a terminal to "interactively" develop the program -- he had to punch the cards, one line per card).
- Swizec 8y ago
  Agree. Those were/are geniuses and it’s relatively obvious that us normals can but aspire to get there. This is healthy. Modern social media has the insidious habit of surrounding you with hundreds of relative geniuses who one-by-one are totally achievable. But as a group they expose you to tens even hundreds of breakthroughs every day. Individual breakthrough or achievement may have taken 6 months, but when you see ten of them per day you start to wonder why you can’t stack up.
marktangotango 8y ago
People often remark on this but I wonder how different is it from a library where anyone can find the greatest works by the greatest minds in history? It all just a bit self congratulatory and self absorbed to me.
- nottorp 8y ago
  To answer it in library terms... 1. The catalogue can be instantly searched. 2. You don't need for the other guy to return the physical copy so you can start reading it. 3. Inter library loans are instantaneous regardless of distance. These advantages are more significant than you think.
a-dub 8y ago
I call it "the bush vs. the line". There are lots of comfortable places to hang out in the bush (tree? whatever). The internet linearizes it, for better or worse.

by Swizec 8y ago

whatshisface 8y ago

Specialize enough and you can do it.

acqq 8y ago

Even before today's internet the famous "geniuses" existed and what they were able to do was not achievable by the ("untrained" or "untalented") mortals. There are so many examples, but I'll take just one which is, as far as I understand, indisputable: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/bobby-fisher-playing-50-opponents-simultaneously-hollywood-hotel-1964/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/bobby-fisher-playing-50-opp... "At age 20, Fischer won the 1963–64 U.S. Championship with 11/11, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament." My programming favorite is definitely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 Knuth writes an ALGOL compiler for Burroughs in 1960. "don claimed that he could write the compiler and a language manual all by himself during his three and a half month summer vacation. He said that he would do it for $5000." "it was taking mortal human beings 25 man-years to write compilers: not three and a half man-months." "The machine had 4080 words of memory." He did it. During the summer of 1960, receiving the computer time as the "third" (after the payroll tasks and when the people developing Fortran compiler didn't need a computer). "he had been working all summer from cards" (punched cards -- for this time a normal condition: he didn't have a terminal to "interactively" develop the program -- he had to punch the cards, one line per card).

Swizec 8y ago
Agree. Those were/are geniuses and it’s relatively obvious that us normals can but aspire to get there. This is healthy. Modern social media has the insidious habit of surrounding you with hundreds of relative geniuses who one-by-one are totally achievable. But as a group they expose you to tens even hundreds of breakthroughs every day. Individual breakthrough or achievement may have taken 6 months, but when you see ten of them per day you start to wonder why you can’t stack up.

marktangotango 8y ago

People often remark on this but I wonder how different is it from a library where anyone can find the greatest works by the greatest minds in history? It all just a bit self congratulatory and self absorbed to me.

nottorp 8y ago
To answer it in library terms... 1. The catalogue can be instantly searched. 2. You don't need for the other guy to return the physical copy so you can start reading it. 3. Inter library loans are instantaneous regardless of distance. These advantages are more significant than you think.

a-dub 8y ago

I call it "the bush vs. the line". There are lots of comfortable places to hang out in the bush (tree? whatever). The internet linearizes it, for better or worse.