[Novalug] Something Light and, mostly, Amusing

Dan Arico dan_arico@aricosystems.com
Sun Dec 3 14:59:00 EST 2006


On Sun December 3 2006 8:49 am, Alan McConnell wrote:
> The following, for your amusement, is from the NYTimes.  There is
> a slightly more serious note at the end.

I've been working on an article tangentially related to this. It seems to 
me that our educational/business systems are designed to recruit and 
train people to fit into already existing systems. The folks who run 
them aren't interested in people who are innovators except in small 
incremental changes.

So how do the real innovators, the ones who cause quantum changes in 
civilization, arise? It starts at a very early age when play edges over 
into new territory and young people begin to do things just to see what 
happens.

I got into chemistry in grade school when I discovered some science books 
in the school library. I started with the simple experiments I found 
there and moved into designing my own experiments. By the time I hit 
high school, I was into rockets and explosives. By the time I hit 
college, I already had years of experience in chemistry under my belt.

I have since discovered that almost all the real technological innovators 
got started the same way. Vint Cerf, for instance, built bombs and 
rockets in his garage. Today, we'd both probably have adjoining prison 
cells.

It's more than just a crackdown on anything construed as "terrorism", 
however. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is bad enough, but 
the more pernicious influence has come from the Consumer Products Safety 
Commission and the tort lawyers. They have "protected" us from harm to 
the point that it is impossible to buy a real chemistry set and any 
attempt by an amateur scientist to buy strong oxidizers or toxic 
chemicals is met by a forest of licensing and regulations.

Childhood and adolescence are being directed into channels that are 
taking the adventure out of life and insuring that the next generation 
of scientists will be dull plodders who never make an earth-shaking 
discovery.

Dan

-- 
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all, and in the Darkness bind them,
In the land of Redmond, where the Sales Reps lie.



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