> Having all the world's knowledge available on your desktop just a click away is the beginning of another exponential leap forward.
Indeed. I had a fun example of that just last Friday. I volunteered for a new task on my job, rewriting someone's sloppy ad-hoc implementation of some diagram-drawing stuff in our application. I decided to practice the virtue of scolarship[0] and 5 minutes later, I had a printed copy of a paper from (who I assume are) leading experts on this particular topic, from which I've learned of approaches that were much better than ones I was thinking of.
Today we have an unprecedented opportunity - no matter where you live, no matter what question you have, as long as you know English, you have access not just to knowledge about it; you have access to the best knowledge humanity as a species currently has about it. You only have to use it. Want to learn about some topic? Don't pick up just any random tutorial, spend 10 minutes and get[1] the best book on the subject.
(Not to say that papers are perfect - I sometimes wish researchers would cut the bullshit out of publications, and focus more on presenting the methods instead of the results. I.e. it's fine and dandy that your algorithm is so good it can be used in realtime, but how about focusing more on explaining the details of the algorithm itself, so that I could actually use it?)
[1] - buy if you can, copy if you must. Personally, I support IP on books only in so far it helps the authors get fairly compensated; all the publishing industry built around it is mostly a huge brake on that "another exponential leap forward" 'WalterBright mentioned.
Indeed. I had a fun example of that just last Friday. I volunteered for a new task on my job, rewriting someone's sloppy ad-hoc implementation of some diagram-drawing stuff in our application. I decided to practice the virtue of scolarship[0] and 5 minutes later, I had a printed copy of a paper from (who I assume are) leading experts on this particular topic, from which I've learned of approaches that were much better than ones I was thinking of.
Today we have an unprecedented opportunity - no matter where you live, no matter what question you have, as long as you know English, you have access not just to knowledge about it; you have access to the best knowledge humanity as a species currently has about it. You only have to use it. Want to learn about some topic? Don't pick up just any random tutorial, spend 10 minutes and get[1] the best book on the subject.
(Not to say that papers are perfect - I sometimes wish researchers would cut the bullshit out of publications, and focus more on presenting the methods instead of the results. I.e. it's fine and dandy that your algorithm is so good it can be used in realtime, but how about focusing more on explaining the details of the algorithm itself, so that I could actually use it?)
[0] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/3m3/the_neglected_virtue_of_scholars...
[1] - buy if you can, copy if you must. Personally, I support IP on books only in so far it helps the authors get fairly compensated; all the publishing industry built around it is mostly a huge brake on that "another exponential leap forward" 'WalterBright mentioned.
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