Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine
kurzweilai.net
kurzweilai.net
By my third interview, I finally got the hang of things:
I quietly sat while the interviewer read my résumé for
the first time and then listened to him talk about his
exciting computing project. While I can’t remember what
his project was, I do remember what his response was to
my question about its application in science or business:
"errr, I’m not sure; I guess I don’t really understand
why you’d ask that."
That's an amazing trait. As an aide, to get a more complete view of what Thinking Machines was don't miss this: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Thinking-Machines.aspx
This paragraph really blew my hair back:
"In retrospect I realize that in almost everything that we worked on together, we were both amateurs. In digital physics, neural networks, even parallel computing, we never really knew what we were doing. But the things that we studied were so new that no one else knew exactly what they were doing either. It was amateurs who made the progress."
Don't ever not work on something just because you are an amateur and there are all these fancy experts out there. Even if you never contribute something new, it'll always be new and exciting to you.
"This guy came to me and asked me to explain it. I explained him once, and he didn't understand. Then I explained him again for a second time, and he still didn't get it. By the third time I was explaining it to him, even I managed to understand it, but he was still clueless."
It is why experienced teachers are good...
Thinking Machines eventually went out of business but if I remember correctly the s/w part of the company became part of Sun, which as we all know, also is no longer. The company DNA has ended up in Redwood Shores, home to both SQL the language and SQL the airport.
There are a lot of very interesting youtube video interviews with RF from the British TV series Horizon.
I especially enjoyed the part where Feynman showed up and they didn't have anything important for him to do right away, so they sent him out to get office supplies. A lot of people would have thrown around a lot of attitude about how running an errand like that was beneath them. Even though Feynman really was a big shot, he never acted like one (and he despised those who did act that way). It was just a job that needed to be done, so he went out and did it.