Randy Pausch, who taught computer science at Carnegie Mellon, died yesterday.
To date, more than 3 million people have watched his video on YouTube "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams."
He dedicated it to his children.
I watched it thinking of you, my little ones. Pausch was an accomplished professor, a creator, an excellent speaker. He spent his professional life studying how humans interact with computers. He was interested in virtual reality, initiating projects that will survive him. His legacy can be said impressive.
What I’m leaving you with is definitely different. Should I be sorry? I have none of Pausch’s achievements or fame, but I share with him a desire to voice. His was about how to succeed. Mine is about how not to fail.
Pausch had real pride in his itinerary. It was an exceptional one, I’ll admit. Mine for sure is devious, made of a record-breaking amount of mistakes. I truly wish it could be otherwise. We’ll have to make-do with what we have.
But you might be surprised: Your Laolao, like Pausch, is also interested in how we interact with computers.
To study the phenomenon, I do not use science, programming languages, gadgets, hardware, cables. I use my memory and its holes, and travel back in time. Through these interstices, as an example, I can revisit my grand-mother when she would tell me to go outside, early in the morning, to help my grand-father bring into the house logs for the woodstove. The first fascinating ‘machine’ I came across. A brilliant one, filled with fire. So dynamic, in constant motion, with a magnificent scent, that of a burning intensity filling the room. The sound too, ardent, explosive, always deep in my ears.
A machine I could play with. My grand-parents, despite my young age, allowed me to feed it, to enliven it. I was master of the incendiary, yes, like an agitator. Ready to deal with the passions and anger of the inferno. All day long. My childhood ablaze, sitting next to the woodstove, adding twigs or paper to make sure the colors, incandescent red, orange, yellow, would not abandon me. Guardian of an immense power, fiery; torrid flames enkindling my pride.
That relationship to the woodstove is similar to the one I have today to my laptop.
As I lift the cover to peek inside a bright world in continual change, I see how pixels are, them too, flammable. Combustible. Fueled by materials highly consumable. And I remain spellbound by the feverish heat, the bodily brilliance of the screen igniting thoughts and emotions twirling until they become ashes. Settling their incinerated flakes, floating colonies of letters, matter pulverized - the residues that sentences are made of after the eruptions of trillions of tiny storage dots against our spirit. Intensity data invariably requiring more memory. High resolution blasts shining, sparkling, and then calming down, becoming the sediment of sharper images to hold on to.
I have traveled far, baby. Persistently after heat and light. Finding them in intricate mazes. In the labyrinths - tunnels and networks that enmesh the topology of all our searches.
What we now do online, I have always done it in a constellation of feelings about what I can’t find. The chaos is not new. The disorganization of information has consistently been around. The pathways and connections have always been an entangled assemblage of despotic configurations. Hard to sort out using non-current verb tenses.
And we add logs, and twigs, even detritus, to keep it all alive, even when we get scorched. Every time we write, access a page, wiki, blog, link, record, film, stream, down/upload, view, listen, draw, delete, bookmark, tag, we program, in an object-and-subject-oriented way, the paradigm of combustion. Burning all we are to arrive faster at the inflections of our grammatical souls – where we can bend away from alignment and simply send out waves. A transfer of energy, a perpetual last lecture like a gift to the virtual atoms and molecules of our collective egos. The cooling charcoal text left behind like a soft carpet to mark footsteps.
It doesn't mean though we know how to read.
Laolao
To date, more than 3 million people have watched his video on YouTube "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams."
He dedicated it to his children.
I watched it thinking of you, my little ones. Pausch was an accomplished professor, a creator, an excellent speaker. He spent his professional life studying how humans interact with computers. He was interested in virtual reality, initiating projects that will survive him. His legacy can be said impressive.
What I’m leaving you with is definitely different. Should I be sorry? I have none of Pausch’s achievements or fame, but I share with him a desire to voice. His was about how to succeed. Mine is about how not to fail.
Pausch had real pride in his itinerary. It was an exceptional one, I’ll admit. Mine for sure is devious, made of a record-breaking amount of mistakes. I truly wish it could be otherwise. We’ll have to make-do with what we have.
But you might be surprised: Your Laolao, like Pausch, is also interested in how we interact with computers.
To study the phenomenon, I do not use science, programming languages, gadgets, hardware, cables. I use my memory and its holes, and travel back in time. Through these interstices, as an example, I can revisit my grand-mother when she would tell me to go outside, early in the morning, to help my grand-father bring into the house logs for the woodstove. The first fascinating ‘machine’ I came across. A brilliant one, filled with fire. So dynamic, in constant motion, with a magnificent scent, that of a burning intensity filling the room. The sound too, ardent, explosive, always deep in my ears.
A machine I could play with. My grand-parents, despite my young age, allowed me to feed it, to enliven it. I was master of the incendiary, yes, like an agitator. Ready to deal with the passions and anger of the inferno. All day long. My childhood ablaze, sitting next to the woodstove, adding twigs or paper to make sure the colors, incandescent red, orange, yellow, would not abandon me. Guardian of an immense power, fiery; torrid flames enkindling my pride.
That relationship to the woodstove is similar to the one I have today to my laptop.
As I lift the cover to peek inside a bright world in continual change, I see how pixels are, them too, flammable. Combustible. Fueled by materials highly consumable. And I remain spellbound by the feverish heat, the bodily brilliance of the screen igniting thoughts and emotions twirling until they become ashes. Settling their incinerated flakes, floating colonies of letters, matter pulverized - the residues that sentences are made of after the eruptions of trillions of tiny storage dots against our spirit. Intensity data invariably requiring more memory. High resolution blasts shining, sparkling, and then calming down, becoming the sediment of sharper images to hold on to.
I have traveled far, baby. Persistently after heat and light. Finding them in intricate mazes. In the labyrinths - tunnels and networks that enmesh the topology of all our searches.
What we now do online, I have always done it in a constellation of feelings about what I can’t find. The chaos is not new. The disorganization of information has consistently been around. The pathways and connections have always been an entangled assemblage of despotic configurations. Hard to sort out using non-current verb tenses.
And we add logs, and twigs, even detritus, to keep it all alive, even when we get scorched. Every time we write, access a page, wiki, blog, link, record, film, stream, down/upload, view, listen, draw, delete, bookmark, tag, we program, in an object-and-subject-oriented way, the paradigm of combustion. Burning all we are to arrive faster at the inflections of our grammatical souls – where we can bend away from alignment and simply send out waves. A transfer of energy, a perpetual last lecture like a gift to the virtual atoms and molecules of our collective egos. The cooling charcoal text left behind like a soft carpet to mark footsteps.
It doesn't mean though we know how to read.
Laolao
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