Note: I’m playing fast and loose with history here. The details aren’t important. It’s the perceptions that I’m speaking to.

In college I had a professor who was talking to the class about the Napoleonic wars. He set the stage for us by telling us how Europe was transitioning into a modern society and they knew it. For the first time in history people were looking at their present and realizing that it was different than the past.

You know how sometimes someone will ask you how your day was and you say, “Same old. Same old.” That’s how life was before around the 1700s, give or take a few hundred years. Point is that most men and women did what their mothers and fathers had done and that’s pretty much how life had been for generations enumerable.

The point here is that Europeans in the 1800s had a sence that they were permanently different than their ancestors and that maybe they wouldn’t even have any more wars. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Then of course everything went to pot when Napoleon started marching around the continent. Not only were they disappointed that they were back at war but this was really bad. They had cannons and muskets and things that made a real mess out of some really nice estates. Not to mention the raping and pillaging that the soldiers did along the way which is pretty much what soldiers had always done.

So just when they thought they were finally pulling themselves out of the mud they fell into a shit hole.

That’s the essence of what my professor was communicating to us.

I raised my hand and said, “But you know, we did get Beethoven’s 9th Symphony out of it.” That pretty much got me a “globber” from everyone in the class including the professor.

My point was that, while it may have been really crappy for those stuck in the mess it’s really pretty far removed from us now. Plus we’ve seen things like the Holocaust and such that makes the Napoleonic wars look like a garden party.

But it was the tragedy of those times that inspired Beethoven’s 9th. That symphony will endure. When the Alps are worn down into gentle rolling hills the air will still occasionally vibrate to the tune of Beethoven’s 9th.

So were the Napoleonic wars bad? Is it appropriate to label something historical in that way? Certainly as we distance ourselves from it we are more inclined to focus on the greatness that they produced instead of the horror they suffered.

So what of today? How will people of the future view the events of today and near future? I think of this often when I think of what might be in store for humanity if global warming turns into a worse case scenario.

Perhaps in the generations to follow they will think of us today, the agents of global warming, as the unknowing saviors of the human race. It could be our actions that in the immediate future will be universally considered “bad” that leads to the next evolution of humanity into a true global society. And so our distant children will be thankful that we blundered yet gave birth to something they cherish.

Then again, maybe we’re all doomed. At any rate. I often think of Shakespeare’s quote in Hamlet who said, “There is nothing neither good nor bad. But thinking makes it so.”

Is there a difference in being happy because you have what you want or that you want what you have? (Read it again. It does make sense.)

Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard, gave a presentation at TED where he covered just that. I don’t want to give anything away but you’ll be happier if you see this 22 minute presentation. And if you’re already happy, you’ll probably understand why.

How long do you work on a given project? I’m just guessing but I’d say 4-6 months is probably the average. Some projects might take in the ballpark of a year or so but few stretch on past that.

But what would it be like if we could work on the same project for years. Granted we would want it to be a pretty damn cool project but still. Just imagine how your RIA, or application, whatever, might work if you devoted a decade to it.

The work of Theo Jansen is a good example of what you might be able to do if you were able to devote 16 years to a project. Although he is an artist, not an engineer, his art looks like a cross between what Leonardo, Babbage and Darwin might have done had they worked together. The thought and care that has gone into his amazing creations are an inspiration.

It’s too bad that few people get to work on projects like this: open ended, little or no oversight, and suffecent funding. Today it’s about getting to market first with no critical bugs. Or getting a new design out without serious testing. Or publishing with little or no editing.

What do you think the Lord of the Rings trilogy would have been like if Tolken hadn’t taken a few decades to write and rewrite over and over again?

I’m not even sure what I would want to work on if I had that freedom. But it’s fun to think about.

What would you do?

Note: I’m playing fast and loose with history here. The details aren’t important. It’s the perceptions that I’m speaking to.

In college I had a professor who was talking to the class about the Napoleonic wars. He set the stage for us by telling us how Europe was transitioning into a modern society and they knew it. For the first time in history people were looking at their present and realizing that it was different than the past.

You know how sometimes someone will ask you how your day was and you say, “Same old. Same old.” That’s how life was before around the 1700s, give or take a few hundred years. Point is that most men and women did what their mothers and fathers had done and that’s pretty much how life had been for generations enumerable.

The point here is that Europeans in the 1800s had a sence that they were permanently different than their ancestors and that maybe they wouldn’t even have any more wars. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Then of course everything went to pot when Napoleon started marching around the continent. Not only were they disappointed that they were back at war but this was really bad. They had cannons and muskets and things that made a real mess out of some really nice estates. Not to mention the raping and pillaging that the soldiers did along the way which is pretty much what soldiers had always done.

So just when they thought they were finally pulling themselves out of the mud they fell into a shit hole.

That’s the essence of what my professor was communicating to us.

I raised my hand and said, “But you know, we did get Beethoven’s 9th Symphony out of it.” That pretty much got me a “globber” from everyone in the class including the professor.

My point was that, while it may have been really crappy for those stuck in the mess it’s really pretty far removed from us now. Plus we’ve seen things like the Holocaust and such that makes the Napoleonic wars look like a garden party.

But it was the tragedy of those times that inspired Beethoven’s 9th. That symphony will endure. When the Alps are worn down into gentle rolling hills the air will still occasionally vibrate to the tune of Beethoven’s 9th.

So were the Napoleonic wars bad? Is it appropriate to label something historical in that way? Certainly as we distance ourselves from it we are more inclined to focus on the greatness that they produced instead of the horror they suffered.

So what of today? How will people of the future view the events of today and near future? I think of this often when I think of what might be in store for humanity if global warming turns into a worse case scenario.

Perhaps in the generations to follow they will think of us today, the agents of global warming, as the unknowing saviors of the human race. It could be our actions that in the immediate future will be universally considered “bad” that leads to the next evolution of humanity into a true global society. And so our distant children will be thankful that we blundered yet gave birth to something they cherish.

Then again, maybe we’re all doomed. At any rate. I often think of Shakespeare’s quote in Hamlet who said, “There is nothing neither good nor bad. But thinking makes it so.”

It’s snowing here in Seattle on Christmas day. My wife commented, sarcastically, “To some this would prove the existence of God.”

To which I replied, “To an epistimilogical skeptic this wouldn’t even prove the existence of snow. It would prove the perception of snow, to the observer. But since the observers’ existence remains in question it leaves the existence of snow unproven.”