h a l f b a k e r yLeft for Bread
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I feel there is an untapped human profession.
The profession is to take knowledge that has been produced and
comparing it with other knowledge that has been produced and
working out if they are relevant to eachother and if they could be
combined together. Then capturing this information and
then
sharing it with the wider community like a journal.
They would sit reading papers all day, interview companies and
university researchers with knowledge they're happy sharing.
In software for example, many companies and universities have
solved problems that are not unique to themselves. But the
knowledge hasn't truly distilled the marketplace. So you move
from one company to another and the company commits the
same errors in IT systems. It's a nightmare.
Another example is products that are open source: Postgresql is
the worlds most advanced open source database. It has an
implementation of Btrees which is rock solid. My implementation
of Btrees is arguably a lot less rock solid. It doesn't even balance
:'( Why isn't this Btrees solved as a product or library that
everybody can use.
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I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. What is the similarity between a "knowledge combiner" that makes and sells a custom library and one that tutors students? |
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The problem is that the future is unevenly distributed. We
have technology to solve many world problems, it's just not
distributed in everybody's head, known to too few people,
not known by the right people, not invested in. Our
knowledge is fragmented. |
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The problem I was interested in at the time was scaling
computer systems. There's a lot of knowledge in this area of
computing but it's unevenly distributed in the hands of
Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon,
(FAANG) |
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Each company solves the problem in its own way and the
knowledge rarely leaves the company except when people
who worked there work elsewhere and bring what they knew
with them. |
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A knowledge combiner would take this knowledge
(knowledge we don't know) and
combine it with other knowledge (that we already know). |
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I understand the problem, but I'm not seeing an idea that addresses it. |
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//Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, (FAANG)// Ah, but with the M, it'd be FMAANG (rhymes with orange), or NMAGAF (where the N is silent), but definitely not Oolongftangftang. |
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The idea seems to be to implement communism,
except the good that gets "redistributed" by the
revolutionaries is proprietary technical information. A
beautiful idea in theory; many problems in practice. |
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I wouldn't support total elimination of the existing patent and copyright/"trade secret" system, but I would pare it back to 10 years for copyright and 7+7 years for patents. And no protection for trade secrets. Fucking hell, why should a company have the "right" to no one knowing their recipe? Especially a hundred years down the line. The further you get into trade secret laws the more it stinks of crony capitalism, fascism, oligarchy, and corruption in general. |
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We're heading for a cyberpunk dystopia. |
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//So you move from one company to another and the
company commits the same errors in IT systems. It's a
nightmare.// |
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Well, the first time around, it's a nightmare. The second time
around, it's a consulting opportunity. Then, the third time
around, it's an open-source project. Since the Btrees of
Postgresql are, as you say, open source, why don't you just
take a cutting, so to speak, to plant in your own garden? |
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Isn't this exactly the problem what "publishing" is designed to solve? |
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//but definitely not Oolongftangftang// which is a shame
at the best of times. |
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But mostly, what [pertinax] said - and you can see this
happening a lot along with the business model of gaining
open source traction and enthusiasm for a particular
solution, and then opening a consultancy to
commercialise it. In that way, knowledge is spread, and
the inventors of that knowledge are able to benefit. |
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Further, whilst it is perhaps less optimal in the moment,
over long periods of time, systematic knowledge
redundancy is not a bad thing. Reinventing wheels
multiple times allows for a kind of emergent, evolution to
take place, with variants of the same solution bubbling up
to replace earlier ones. Every solution bears the marks of
its origin, the specific issues that were in place during its
early development - no matter how generic its makers
were trying to be - personally, I think it's a good thing for
IT builders to have a go at the rock-face and build
something from the ground up, even if it only gives them
a more intimate understanding of the underlying
structure of the problems at hand. |
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Truth is a heavy burden that few want to carry. |
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'Twas ever thus. Why did you think Maecenas got Virgil to write
the Aeneid the way he did? |
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Did you keep the receipts? |
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Briefly, yes. Russell Brand is not a serious thinker (sorry, [po]).
He doesn't know anything that the rest of us don't know. His
understanding of tech is probably rather inferior to that of the
average half-baker. He brings no new insights into economics or
the human condition. He's just decided that he has a vocation to
be a celebrity messiah, to which end he's going to run his mouth
until further notice, drawing on ideas which might have been
fresh and exciting in the 1920s, or maybe the 1890s. |
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[Sgt. Teacup] wrote, "NMAGAF (where the N is silent)".
Technically this is much better than "fang", for one thing
it is
like if they wanted to name a new pharmaceutical
drug, they wanted customers to thing was "magnificent"
then: |
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Magaf sounds vauguely like it might make customers think
it was magnificent. NMagaf is even more fun and
memorable with the first silent N. |
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Magaf-N sounds even more pharmaceuticalish.
. |
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