#29 On the referendum & #4c on Expertise: On the ARPA/PARC ‘Dream Machine’, science funding, high performance, and UK national strategy1 Draft version 1, 11 September 2018
‘Two hands, it isn’t much considering how the world is infinite. Yet, all the same, two hands, they are a lot.’ Alexander Grothendieck, one of the great mathematicians.
‘There isn’t one novel thought in all of how Berkshire [Hathaway] is run. It’s all about … exploiting unrecognized simplicities.’ Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner.
‘He [Licklider] was really the father of it all.’ Robert Taylor.
‘Computers are destined to become interactive intellectual amplifiers for everyone in the world universally networked worldwide.’ Licklider, 1960.
‘Class-2 arguments’: where both sides can explain the other person’s view to the other person’s satisfaction (Taylor).
‘[M]uch of our intellectual elite who think they have “the solutions” have actually cut themselves off from understanding the basis for much of the most important human progress.’ Michael Nielsen, author of Reinventing Science.
‘The ARPA/PARC history shows that a combination of vision, a modest amount of funding, with a felicitous context and process can almost magically give rise to new technologies that not only amplify civilization, but also produce tremendous wealth for the society. Isn’t it time to do this again by Reason, even with no Cold War to use as an excuse?’ Alan Kay, a PARC researcher.
‘I have to live in the same cage with these monkeys’, a professor replies to a plea for help in a bureaucratic war.
*
1 I’ve given this paper an odd numbering because it fits in both series of blogs.