Sunday, July 29, 2012

Two days in Seattle

Two days in Seattle, TKC post, after the interview with Jeff Bezos.

This struck me as important:
When you do something new, you are actually one of the many people who probably won’t understand it for a long time.

I haven't heard it said as such before, and I'd only thought about it in terms of art; an artist often has as much to learn about his own works as his audience has.

Even broader, when working (or dabbling) in any pioneering area, one has to accept a great amount of not-understanding for a lot of time. If one can't, one is not suited for pioneering. Humility helps, or may come, for along with not-understanding often comes mis-understanding (hopefully temporarily). A great number of the greatest inventions were never intended to do what they ended up doing.

2 comments:

Len Edgerly said...

I like your extension of the thought, Eolake, all the way to MIS-understanding. That indeed makes a good case for pioneering with humility! I think a sense of humor is also a handy tool. When I launched The Kindle Chronicles, I named the weekly conversations "The What's on Your Kindle" interview. That seems funny now, when Kindle readers have everything on their Kindles; it's just the new way we read.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, indeed. Humor is essential in so many ways. Anyway I think the parts of the interviews which go beyond that are the most interesting, particularly all attempts at an eagle’s point of view, like Winderwalker and McQuivey etc. And the more difficult areas: where not only the biz i going, but where reading is going.

By the way, you said to Bezos that you were surprised so much you are reading on the Fire. Then today I listen to an old podcast, where you say the Nook Color is no good for you for reading cuz of the screen. So I wonder if that’s a difference in the screen, or if it’s you getting more used to backlit screens?

I am reading sometimes at night with the relatively new Blio reader (iPad app), which will read aloud to you. It’s not the very best implementation, but it works. I’m looking forward to more readers reading aloud on tablets, I don’t know what’s holding them back.
I’ll have it very dark in my room, turn the ipad screen to lowest setting (it goes very low), and rest my eyes, and will only look at the screen if there’s something I don’t catch.

Kindly yours, Eolake