House of Eratosthenes

Let’s give some background before defining this one. I came up with thirty things a guy should do if he wants to be a real guy, then I thought of a thirty-first thing. And well before that, I wrote at length about the Yin and Yang theory, which says, in a nutshell, that as people mature they have two distinctly different ways of gaining control over their surroundings. Let’s look into Yin and Yang and then revisit this thirty-first thing guys should know how to do.

Quoting from the tenth installment,

The Yang mature earlier…By the time they’re two or three years old, and probably earlier than that, they show a proclivity for achieving an emotional equilibrium with other persons present, which are usually their parents, before doing much of anything. They get lonely when they can’t do this. The Yin, on the other hand, fail to achieve this level of connection with persons in the vicinity and so they end up building things. After they have done something in solitude, then they may try to achieve this emotional connection now that they have a “token” to present. You might say the Yang child says “mommy and daddy, look at me” whereas the Yin child says “look at what I did.”

Should the Yin achieve any talent at communicating with people at all, they do this well into adulthood and they only do it when backed into a corner, finding it impossible to function in society while working in solitude, which by then is the environment in which they’re more comfortable. They would much rather be Dr. Frankensteins, cobbling together some monstrosity in a cobweb-covered laboratory somewhere.

The Yang end up frustrated with the Yin, and the Yin end up frustrated with the Yang. But ultimately, society as a whole only acts on the frustrations of the Yang, because they are more expressive. So as society matures, it becomes more and more Yang-dominant, at which time the Yin traits are thought to be disabilities, freakisms, abnormalities, handicaps.

And of course, there is no reason to think otherwise. Save one: Everything we have, we have because someone was a Yin. That includes the innovations most cherished by the Yang. The cell phone is a great example. Once you become accustomed to living your day-to-day Yang existence with a cell phone, it’s almost impossible to go on without it. And how did we come up with cell phones? A bunch of Dr. Frankensteins in a bunch of cobweb-covered laboratories came up with radio receivers, transmitters, protocols, error correction algorithms, liquid crystal displays…the list goes on and on.

The Yang being more expressive, some of them attempt to appropriate credit for these innovations; this is usually by means of the committee usurping credit from the individual. We just saw it happen with the Internet itself, in the form of that guy who was insisting this was a government accomplishment. I had to set up straight over at Cassy’s place when he made the claim…

ARPANET started in 1969. In 1983, TCP/IP was introduced. In 1996, the first image appeared. Hundreds of engineers spent thirty years and millions of dollars. You think Bank of America has that kind of patience? Most corporations don’t even keep their value for 30 years, much less do business on it. So yes, only governments can do that kind of work.

To which I replied…

Very accurate. You’ve clearly been doing your research. The dates are a little bit off, but other than that your encapsulation is almost a verbatim recitation of what actually happened.

At least, once the contributions of private industry are removed, with surgical precision. Which seems to be the case with whatever you’ve been reading.

The history of ARPANET is actually as follows…

Background of the ARPANET

The earliest ideas of a computer network intended to allow general communication between users of various computers were formulated by J.C.R. Licklider of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in August 1962, in a series of memos discussing his “Intergalactic Computer Network” concept. These ideas contained almost everything that the Internet is today.

Creation of the ARPANET

By mid-1968, a complete plan had been prepared, and after approval at ARPA, a Request For Quotation (RFQ) was sent to 140 potential bidders. Most regarded the proposal as outlandish, and only 12 companies submitted bids, of which only four were regarded as in the top rank. By the end of the year, the field had been narrowed to two, and after negotiations, a final choice was made, and the contract was awarded to BBN on 7 April 1969.

BBN’s proposal followed [MIT Lincoln Laboratory scientist Larry] Roberts’ plan closely; it called for the network to be composed of small computers known as Interface Message Processors (more commonly known as IMPs), what are now called routers. The IMPs at each site performed store-and-forward packet switching functions, and were connected to each other using modems connected to leased lines (initially running at 50 kbit/second). Host computers connected to the IMPs via custom bit-serial interfaces to connect to ARPANET.

So you see, it really isn’t a case of government fronting the capital and braving risks that would’ve scared off private investors. The risk was mitigated, instead, by orders of magnitude — start small, grow with success over time. And always, think critically as only individuals can do.

And no, private business didn’t borrow from what was innovated by the DoD or any other arm of government. It was quite the reverse. BBN came up with the cool ideas that were the foundation of ARPANET, and then being the first public-sector entity involved in this development, ARPANET appropriated all the credit — especially once Al Gore started flailing around for excuses for letting his ego get away with him in that interview with Wolf Blitzer, taking credit for “creating the Internet.”

Individuals innovated, committees brought people together to form standards for putting it all together. And then after something meaningful came of it, the committees took the credit for the technology, just like I said they always do.

There really isn’t anything to worry about here, unless we make the mistake of doing everything the Yang way. Which is always the temptation, because the Yang behave the way they do to get attention, and who doesn’t like to get attention?

But extremism will get you in trouble, because if everyone in human history acted to get attention and served no higher purpose, we wouldn’t have anything. That’s, if we’d be around at all, which we probably wouldn’t be because our prehistoric ancestors would’ve starved to death.

Thing I Know #62. Throughout history, very little of note has been accomplished by people who made a paramount of concern out of what others thought.

Now, it should be obvious to anyone even with a slight bit of experience working in a team environment, what exactly is the talent of the Yang. It’s communication. Empathy. Understanding what “the room” is thinking…which in turn is useful for assuming a leadership position, should the person so desire.

Trouble is, all these strengths melt away when people aren’t around. And so this pattern emerges: An exciting and capable new tool is built in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory; it needs funding and so it is presented to a committee; the committee is run by someone who, from birth, would not feel comfortable working in that laboratory. And so mankind’s biggest ideas, in order to acquire both inspiration and capital funding, have to straddle this huge divide between Yin and Yang. One wonders how far along we would be by now, technology-wise, if that were not the case. Maybe we’d have a Dysan Sphere by this point. Or maybe we’d be rocketing across the galaxy at supra-light speeds, hitching up giant tow-cables to the planets we find there, yanking them back over here, and grinding them up for our energy needs. Or something.

But we have to let the Yang run everything, even though the Yin actually build things. It makes the Yang feel good. They like to have everything working their way, and they talk so much it’s hard to tell them things sometimes, or to challenge their viewpoints.

So that’s what the Yang do well. How do you define the aptitude that is nurtured and manifested by the Yin?

This is the thirty-first thing a manly-man should learn how to do. It has to do with fitting things together, which out of necessity involves knowing why things do the things they do.

I remember back in the early 1980’s when computers started to become popular with small businesses. Looking back on it, what a comedy of errors it was. People would figure out this was going to be something big, and they’d go to classes to figure out how to work a computer. The class would then herd in 14 other interested computer using people, and they’d all sit down and type in the following:

10 LET A = 1
20 PRINT A
30 LET A = A + 1
40 IF A > 10 GOTO 60
50 GOTO 20
60 END

Toward the end of that first day, a lady in the second or third row would inevitably say “I don’t see what this has to do with word processing,” and the instructor said “we’ll be getting to that next week.”

This was a breakdown, something swallowed up in the Yin/Yang divide. With Yin and Yang theory, we now understand that if you excel at following instructions, you are likely to suffer serious handicaps in this kind of innovation…and vice-versa. They are mutually exclusive aptitudes.

Think about…electronics kits. Think about Lincoln Logs. Toggles. Legos. Tinker Toys. Erector sets. What do all these things have in common? Parts…do things. Previously-defined things. The assembly as a whole…that is undefined. That is up to you.

And the whole point to Yin and Yang is, that if you survey the socially-mature folks who possess all this aptitude with communication, you’ll find an abundance of discomfort with this sort of freedom. We take great pains to pretend this is not the case, because when we see someone knows how to talk with grandiloquence, we instinctively want to make them feel like they can do anything. But as we saw with those computer classes a quarter century ago, it just isn’t the case. You get this “just tell me what keys to press” thing.

It doesn’t mean they’re useless people. Not at all. But they tend to flourish when there are established procedures to be followed. They also tend to think — with people as well as inanimate objects — in terms of “supposd’a.” You press this button, that light is supposed’a come on. If the light comes on, they know exactly what to do next. If the light doesn’t come on…they’re pretty much lost.

And so Yinnovation is the ability to create solutions. It is, quite simply, the ability to assemble a complex thing out of simple building blocks, without the benefit of instruction. It is a complex aptitude. What happens here is, the tools (and parts) have these properties that are defined…the properties can be discovered but not changed. There is an objective to be fulfilled. The tools and parts have the potential — this is not a sure thing — to, perhaps, fulfill the objective. Maybe. Nobody really knows that yet.

And so the Yin have the capacity to chart their own course on this. They are McGyver. It isn’t guesswork; they have to understand why the light is “supposed’a” come on when you push the button, and if the light doesn’t come on, what might make that happen. How, when you make a drive gear smaller, you get less speed but more torque.

They live in a different world. “Sposed’a” doesn’t enter into it. Their world is one of cause and effect: If you stand on that end of the board and if I jump on this end of the board, then you’ll go flying.

And that is the thirty-first thing men need to do in order to be real men. You don’t get to drive a car, until you know how to change a tire. The pointy end of the lug nuts go inside…not because they’re sposed’a…but for a specific reason. Cause and effect. A manly man should know the reason the pointy ends of the lug nuts go inside. A manly man should know all the things that can make the “Check Engine” light come on. A manly man should understand what noise might mean what problem, and not be reduced to describing it to another manly man as “a funny noise.” That’s what women are for.

Heh…kiddin’. Have a sense of humor.

A manly man should come alive when there is a hardware project. A manly man should walk into a hardware store, doing the math…bicycle has two tires, I want each one suspended on a 3/16″ cable, each one with a slip ring, a small carabiner clip, etc. Bed headboard needs four bolts, each one will have two washers and two nuts, one to tighten and one to lock. Yinnovation: The component parts have previously defined properties, but how they fit together is up to you, and there are no procedures put together by someone else. You have to know how things work, or else you are lost. A manly man will look on any kind of project like this with enthusiasm and not with dread.

bt how du u wrk tis keebrd?
- vanderleun | 08/03/2008 @ 20:08
Ah…hardware stores. They are the places that promises and dreams are made of.

Is that how women feel when they go shopping?
- pdwalker | 08/04/2008 @ 00:09

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