You might think the fiddly detailiness of things is limited to human centric domains, and that physics itself is simple and elegant. That’s true in some sense – the physical laws themselves tend to be quite simple – but the manifestation of those laws is often complex and counterintuitive.
Why not just publish paper books? If we decided to publish paper books, we would have to: find money, set up logistics, and accept the loss of connection with the book.
A technology that depends on a wasteful use of finite resources can hardly be permanent. This is why a radical reduction of that wastefulness is a major concern to us: maximize the hardware lifespans, minimize the energy use. And this is not just about a set of technical problems to be fixed – the attitudes also need a radical turn.
All of these attributes didn’t come together at once. We finished each in steps—each adding a new dimension to the feel. In sum, they work together to transform the basic into something epic.
First, narratives tend to be too simple. The point of a narrative is to strip it way, not just into 18 minutes, but most narratives you could present in a sentence or two. So when you strip away detail, you tend to tell stories in terms of good vs. evil, whether it's a story about your own life or a story about politics. Now, some things actually... See more
When you liberate programming from the requirement to be general and professional and scalable, it becomes a different activity altogether, just as cooking at home is really nothing like cooking in a commercial kitchen. I can report to you: not only is this different activity rewarding in almost exactly the same way that cooking for someone you... See more