“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity” Robert A. Heinlein

You are smart. You know it. People around do notice. You must be doing great, but somehow you are not. You are stuck and not sure what to do. It’s probably time to be stupid. Let me bring up some well-known examples first.

1. Sergey and Larry launched yet another search engine in 1996. With no business model and the market apparently dominated by behemoths like Yahoo.
2. Andy wrote a check for $100,000 to the guys he barely knew, before they even had a company.
3. Stanford drop off Steve persuaded his friend Woz to build personal computers in a garage. Woz later said that “All the best things I did at Apple came from (a) not having money, (b) not having done it before ever.”

At the time, when it was happening, all that would be considered very stupid by most of us.

As heretic as it sounds you can’t avoid being stupid if you want to succeed. The Heinlein’s quote above might be deeper than most people think. I’m going to use a little computer science example to explain how it works.
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It’s been a long time since I wrote here something. As things keep on being crazy (and exciting) with Loudtalks, it’s not going to change any time soon. Yet, I found some old text on my HDD, which I wrote while the life was easy but never posted them since they were not quite complete yet. I’ll publish them now (as is) and will finally cross these long overdue items in my never ending to do.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

In a kindergarten I wanted to be Fantomas but nobody asked. Then – an astronaut. Then – an archeologist (yup, if you meet Harrison Ford please tell him). Then – a geologist. Then… strangely I don’t remember what was my target in the high school.

Astronaut, archeologist, geologist – this is what I was telling adults when asked. I never told them the truth because they wouldn’t understand. What I wanted to be the most was a magician. I wanted that magic wand and the power to make wonderful and impossible things. At different times people, who wanted to be magicians, selected different professions. In XVIII century’s magic was alchemy, in XIX – chemistry and in XX – physics. Software and computer science are the magic of our time.

I’m a happy man because I’m living the dream. You are probably too. But here is the question. Is software the last magic ever? I guess it isn’t. Then, what’s the next?

What do you think?

P.S.

Current magic typically fails to deliver, what was expected, however the next magic delivers something valuable and quite unexpected instead.

Alchemy failed to turn lead into gold, but gave us Newton laws.

Physics failed in nuclear fusion power, flying cars, teleportation and space travel. We’ve got the internet, mobile phones, pocket-sized computers and Moore’s law instead.

Computer science will probably fail in thinking computers (aka Artificial Intelligence), natural language processing and transparent real-time machine translation (Babel fish).

What will be the next magic? What surprises will it bring to us?