{"id":13,"date":"2005-01-21T02:56:39","date_gmt":"2005-01-21T06:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2005\/01\/21\/feats-of-clay\/"},"modified":"2005-01-21T02:56:39","modified_gmt":"2005-01-21T06:56:39","slug":"feats-of-clay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2005\/01\/21\/feats-of-clay\/","title":{"rendered":"Feats of Clay"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I had an epiphany after the end of the conference last Saturday. 
\nI was pacing <\/span>– as I inevitably am when they strike – thinking
\nabout the last session of the day, where Dave Winer had asked everyone
\nwhat more they wanted out of blog software beyond title, attribution, and
\ndate.  ‘More options for configuring my main page<\/span>,’ said
\none.  ‘More than just chronological ordering,<\/span>‘ said another,
\n‘that’s what we spend all day working on in the newspaper editing
\nroom<\/span>‘…<\/p>\n

It came to me that no-one, not the hotshot designers, not the
\ninterface gurus, not the luminaries in the room, not the blog-happy
\ngrandmothers with surfeits of common sense, had an inkling of what an
\nideal interface would look like, even for their own peculiar needs. 
\nWhere I grew up [TwenCen Earth<\/span>, for those of you following along from a vasty distance<\/span>],
\nwe weren’t raised to think this way.  We’re lucky to see one or
\ntwo ideal interfaces<\/span> in our lifetime that we recognize as such (of
\ncourse our bodies, the natural world, even those man-made constructs we
\ntake for granted, often qualify).<\/p>\n

I could go off on what kind of ideal interface I would like – in fact I
\nfeel somehow obligated to answer the catalyst question – but that’s for
\nanother time.  It’s enough to note here the thought that even
\nclever and skillful craftsmen are rarely working towards an Ideal<\/span>. 
\nAnd most people don’t know what their ideal interfaces, tools, or
\ntoolchains would be like, wouldn’t recognize their blueprints, wouldn’t
\nknow quite what to do with one them until they picked it up, walked
\nthrough one, saw someone next to them on a subway or airplane using it
\nwith ease…<\/p>\n

I also saw for an instant the steady progress of my own criticism of
\nthe world : the progression of classes of idols whose feet <\/span>I’ve watched
\nmelt and run <\/span>in the warm rain
\nwhen I began to know a few personally.  Public school teachers;
\ndoctors<\/span>;
\nlawyers; professors;<\/span> <\/span>city boards and mayors; venture capitalists<\/span>; my
\nparents (despite remaining, respectively, the most brilliant and most
\nsensible adults I’ve ever met); international <\/span>political and media leaders<\/span>… and now technologists<\/span>.  It comes
\nas a physical shock each time I realize that another class of [expert,
\nbrilliant] people don’t generally know or even feel that they could know<\/span>
\nwhat the next
\nfifty years have in store; don’t know of or feel obliged to find a
\ncoordinated approach to coordinating the efforts of a thousand
\ncolleagues in their field; don’t have access to conceptual blueprints<\/a>
\nwhich, however difficult to realize, make sense of the chaos of the
\npresent.<\/p>\n

I have known a double-handful of geniuses whose analysis, perceptiveness, and sense of direction and place<\/span> – a balance of local and nonlocal Tao? – I would follow
\nanywhere.  But they are rarely the models or idols in their
\nfields; more often they are the eccentric success stories.  (And
\nthe last time I did follow one, the rain washed out their foundation if not their feet…
\nso I don’t look too closely.)<\/p>\n

More surprising to me — I have yet to meet a class of people who
\nrecognized one another for those capacities, and collectively sought
\nout that lasting marble clarity as they pressed forward with their
\nlife’s work.  For a while I thought technologists and inventors
\nepitomized this capacity, despite inefficiencies in the notion of
\ncapital markets.   But I realize now that there is rarely
\nsocial or financial advantage in this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had an epiphany after the end of the conference last Saturday.  I was pacing – as I inevitably am when they strike – thinking about the last session of the day, where Dave Winer had asked everyone what more they wanted out of blog software beyond title, attribution, and date.  ‘More options for configuring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-d","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}