Post-christmas notes #4

Here we go again. I feel I must get these things out before I can resume my regular blogging practice.

• I have realized that I tend to think more in terms of systems. First, when I considered “tourism” juxtaposed with “RSS reader” (see here and here), I saw it as a system consisting of tourists traveling to places, learning which ones they like and trying to find new places to go to, sharing this information either freely or to trusted people (depending on how “mainstream” they are). ––– I also thought about book writing as a system, where writers release books, which are reviewed by critics, and regardless of what the writer thinks of critics, he is affected either positively or negatively of the criticism; writers also read each others’ books and get inspired, and so on. (I don’t remember the context, though.)
• Then I read about Poe’s poem “The Raven”, which I wrote about two days ago. It made me think of the tendency to regard software development as a purely rational process. However, although the impression you get from reading Poe’s essay might be that he’s incredibly rational, what he describes is an exploratory process in which his intuition plays a significant role. One can regard it as an attempt to put a solid framework around a contemplative process. I think that some people thrive on fuzziness, while others need the support of a well-defined process.
• I read an interview (in the same book) with Swedish writer Kerstin Ekman, who falls in the fuzzy category, working several years with each book, having to wait for images and ideas to come to her. She says that it doesn’t work with deadlines, that things can’t be rushed. She also described how she represented separate ideas with cut-out paper clouds in different colors, stuck on cardboard on a wall, so she can shift them around. When she has turned an idea into text, she replaces the cloud with a square; I guess this helps her visualize the progress. This is also an attempt to make concrete something that is extremely fuzzy; she said that writing novels that are as structured as hers requires planning. At the end of the interview she said that it’s impossible to describe the process – that it comes out seeming as more rational as it actually is – it isn’t a linear process, she said.
• Then I read an excerpt from Stephen King’s On Writing, where he wrote something that was repeated by several interviewed writers in the book: that good stories write themselves. He described writing as something resembling archaeology, where the story already exists, but you have to dig it out of the ground yourself. In order to do it quickly, you need blunt tools that do a lot of damage to the find; with fine tools, however, the story is gently excavated, but it takes time. He also gave an account of how his books seldom turn out the way he thinks at the beginning: the story turns out to be something else, and the characters seem to take on lives of their own. But the fact that he doesn’t know what a book will be is not something that keeps him from starting to work on it. ––– He describes how most of his books emerge from images of situations that come to him – which made me think of Richard Gabriel’s talk about triggers (see here).
• I began to watch the movie Bicentennial Man on TV, and I found it interesting when the robot starts to get creative. It made me think of how creativity is related to originality. What makes the idea of a creative robot difficult is the fact that robots (at least so far) are quite rigidly programmed, and there isn’t room for them doing unexpected things, save for when humans make errors in programming them, with unanticipated results. Creativity isn’t predictable. Later in the film Sam Neill tries to teach Robin Williams (the robot) to make jokes, which indicated that humor is a creative activity, and that the reason that some people just aren’t funny is because they simply repeat old jokes. There’s nothing original in that. The only possibility that a repeated joke can be funny is that you either haven’t heard it before, or that it is some new element: for example that it gets a new meaning in the particular context, or that it is told in a funny new way.
• Then I read an essay by Swedish writer Torbjörn Flygt, who wrote about the importance of structure in the work: the more rigidly structured and planned the text is, the more freedom in writing the prose. This suggested the importance of a powerful metaphor, or common vision, for the system being developed, giving freedom to the individual team members. There’s power in individual freedom, when the individuals share a common goal. Contrast this with a team that simply executes a very fine-detailed architecture and design, created by a master planner. ––– Flygt also wrote about the benefits of keeping journals during the course of the work, something he learned from studying John Steinbeck. I am determined to keep a private weblog for each project I work in from now on, where I’ll just write about whatever I think about during the work. It definitely helps exploration and learning.

Just a few points left now. I’ll be back.