The notion that you’re trying to control the process and prevent error screws things up. We all know the saying “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission”. And everyone knows that, but I think there is a corollary: if everyone is trying to prevent error, it screws things up. It’s better to fix problems than to prevent them. And the natural tendency for managers is to try and prevent error and over plan things.
Month: May 2013
How to draw an owl
I remember seeing it years ago. Â Then I totally forgot about it. Â And then I remembered the idea, but couldn’t remember which bird or animal it was. Â Today someone reminded me…
Working in technology, I find that many decisions and plans are made on very similar basis.
James Turrell’s crater observatory
This is truly amazing. Â Not like your new Android tablet. Â I mean, truly amazing.
Via Wired.com. Â Slashdot thread has more.
Medical School
Bootstrapping the Industrial Age
Bootstrapping the Industrial Age
Let’s take a very sophisticated item: one web page. A web page relies on perhaps a hundred thousand other inventions, all needed for its birth and continued existence. There is no web page anywhere without the inventions of HTML code, without computer programming, without LEDs or cathode ray tubes, without solid state computer chips, without telephone lines, without long-distance signal repeaters, without electrical generators, without high-speed turbines, without stainless steel, iron smelters, and control of fire. None of these concrete inventions would exist without the elemental inventions of writing, of an alphabet, of hypertext links, of indexes, catalogs, archives, libraries and the scientific method itself. To recapitulate a web page you have to re-create all these other functions. You might as well remake modern society.