Booking
Posted on September 3, 2007
Filed Under What's New |
That we’re in a period of profound transition hardly needs stating but what drives it? Or rather who and why? For the best part of human history if you wanted to change the world around you then it would be through the political system, or the military, or as an engineer or occasionally through the sheer power of thought brilliantly expressed. On this last subject, when I was a student there was still time to touch on the late Victorian notion that truth in scientific theory related in some inexplicable way to simplicity and simplicity related also to beauty. Like a poem that rhymes, simplicity would somehow elevate facts like a poet could elevate language. Science was the new romanticism. In the past pretty much what you learned growing up was which politician, soldier, scientist or engineeer, even philosopher, built the physical and cultural world. The radical mind said no: real people did more, popular culture is significant… it was a debate.
If you want to change the world today you can choose betwen writing code, evangelising novelty, being an entrepreneur, becoming a designer, an architect perhaps, or a brand manager, or increasingly as part of a crowd (I love this blog tag: tracking the rise of the amateur), with or without a belief in open systems but the last thing you’d do is become a politician, an engineer of the traditional type, join the army or do science.
Why the change? Why such extensive change, and almost, you might say, accidentally? What drove whom and who drove what? We’ve gone from a form of society where change is more or less planned, planned badly or well but still planned, where philosophies competed for the right to initiate change, where democratic systems existed to channel the energy for change into political parties and Government, to one where change comes from any angle imaginable other than the political system. Whereas previously we might point to breakthrough science (remember Einstein) or even pseudo science (remember Freud) as the primary initiators of change nobody would now look in a university for intellectual movers and shakers. Academics just don’t have big enough ideas these days, at least not ideas we feel drawn to or compelled to admire and connect with. Whereas previously the people who built roads, bridges and railways changed the landscape, with the help of huge capital budgets, today the new vistas in front of our eyes have been put there on a shoestring by people like Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, Mark Zuckerberg, and of course designers like Jonathan Ives.
There is practically no debate about this, about the extent of the change, its value and purpose, its origins or usefulness. Along with the multiple actions of many millions changing how we connect, think and communicate, goes only an appetite for believing in it.
So would you read a book that tried to take stock
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4 Responses to “Booking”
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That’s a spam trackback I’m afraid. They’ve linked to a few of my blog posts too
“Why the change?” Probably because they could. GPLed code made it much easier to get at complex applications and distribute the knowledge that drives those apps. While the complexity is too much for some, it’s a booming marketplace for those who understand the code. There are more and more people who do understand the code and help lift the software.
Haydn, the speed at which changes happen these mean that by the time you publish the book you would be documenting a trend that may have passed by already. I would read e-books or blog installments because it allows readers to change and influence your thinking along the journey instead of at the end.
BTW: Good to see your blog back. I missed it.
Vernon
[…] Haydn asked that question on his blog wondering whether he should write a book. I selfishly implored him to blog instead so rather than wait a year or more for his wonderful insight, I could engage him in his thinking everyday perhaps taking him on different paths as he would me. […]
Hi Donncha, Vern. And Conor - I’m a bit slow responding to posts. I find blogging is an uncomfortable place to air your views but pretty much reckon one has to do it.
I’m going to put a few posts up which will highlight some of the dieas I’m going to write about voer the enxt few motnhs and of course would really value feedback.