Attention
I’ve often written here about attention as the key scarce resource. I’m not sure how the rest of you manage it - I feel flooded with interesting, relevant, worthwhile information that I cannot possibly assimilate. It’s compounded by traveling - you just flick through emails in airports, not really working through them, and then they’re all there later. I don’t feel threatened or oppressed by information (I think that reaction could kick in when anxiety was already there, though), but I do feel a little sad that I can’t get to . . much of anything.
As a counterpoint to all the bits and pieces of information swimming by that can’t be seized, plane rides are ideal for taking in a whole essay, an entire piece of a book, an entire draft article. It’s almost too bad that the plane has to arrive, because then it’s all shuffling and waiting and interruption again.
My latest favorite book is The Closed World, by Paul Edwards. Edwards’s focus on the role of institutions and colleagues - social networks, collaboration, personal experiences - in constructing scientific theory is very useful. He’s also big on metaphor.
Because I’m focusing myself on the wonders of open-access fiber networks these days, I’m finding networks of people that are also writing about them. Everyone’s being very generous, sending me links and files. So that’s the social experience of this field right now.
What’s the metaphor for this way of looking at the world of computing? Is it just the open world of collaboration, the guy demo-ing his new Android app, the laughter of the people listening to him? The metaphor for the Cold War research was the all-seeing, all-controlling, closed-world computer. Maybe the metaphor this time is the utility, the useful playing-field - but that’s not very colorful.
Or maybe it’s collective, dreamlike, almost hallucinatory imagination about future possibilities.
No - it’s human communication. In a sense, we’re back to “channels” of communication, but all the noise is helpful and meaningful, not just something to discard. Worth paying attention to.