Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: NTY: Buy Apple gadgets, use Google services, buy media from Amazon
Posted by
Steve Smith on
Feb 18, 2014; 6:52pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/NTY-Buy-Apple-gadgets-use-Google-services-buy-media-from-Amazon-tp7584915p7584936.html
Marcus -
My father, for better or worse, wanted/needed huge swaths of well
traveled territory to learn within. He went from Boy Scouts to Navy
to College to Civil Service, wearing uniforms much of that time, and
learning (by rote) the many standard forms they presented. It made
him feel safe, it let him be useful/performing in places he
otherwise might not have.
Somehow that sent me in an opposite direction, appreciating the core
tools, formalisms, methodologies not as an end, but as a means or
more to the point, a beginning, a point of departure.
As I matured, I *did* discover that I was in fact often/usually
(re)inventing as I went and as you so aptly point out, I'm thankful
for having done so... the things I was "given" were never mine in
the way the things I "created" or "discovered" were. We are a
curious species and maintaining/feeding that curiosity seems to be
an important part of our nature.
I would say my father's curiosity was limited to exploring a vast
landscape of things already laid out for him while mine was to
blunder around in wildernesses often of my own making, only to
discover that I was actually inside of a park so well groomed that
at times it felt to be a wilderness... early on, I resented
discovering that my "inventions" were really "re-discoveries" but at
some point, I began to appreciate that with some of them I was
adding valuable nuances too.
So rather than "knowing the names of the turtles all the way
down", I got to/had to make up names for them as I met them, and
only later discover that they had been named many times already.
It seems to me the folks that are given the names don't value the
names. Clearly there is value in standard language for technical
communication, but harder for me to imagine being taught something
but otherwise having no intuition for it. I guess that's what
many people expect, though?
Marcus
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