I recently got my second tattoo, an image of a Glider from Conway's Game Of Life. Conway's Game of Life is a mathematical construct which model the genesis, spread, and death of idealized mushrooms on an infinite 2-dimensional grid (there are two types of people, based on their reactions to that statement - those who go "huh?", and those who ask whether the mushrooms are spherical, frictionless, and in a vacuum...). Turns out, based on some very simple rules, this system will "evolve" in such a way that has equivalent processing capability with a computer (my apologies to those who know what they're talking about and are wincing as they read this) - it is what we call "Turing Complete". Any problem you can solve, any program you can run, on your laptop, or your phone, or on the combined computational power of AWS, Azure, and Deep Blue combined, can be equivalently solved/run on this system. You can, with appropriately wired inputs and outputs, play Ocarina Of Time on mushrooms (No, this wasn't all just a build-up to that joke. But once I saw where it was going, I couldn't resist).
The Glider is a configuration of mushrooms which is self-sustaining - when the Game is set in motion, the rules of the system cause it to travel slowly but inexorably across the universe of the Game. Individual mushrooms live, interact with one another, and die, and contribute to the continuation of the Glider. To me, this is a concise symbol for a number of important values:
- Collaboration between a network of smaller actors creating something large than themselves (a noble goal for hackers and engineers if ever I heard one!)
- Unforeseen complexity and structure arising from simple rules - from simply examining the description of the rules, there's no way that you could have known that a particular configuration would lead to this behaviour (or any of the even more complex behaviour that exist) - you have to set it up and watch it go.
- Adventure and exploration - this is maybe getting a little overdramatic, but there's something a little inspiring about the plucky little glider zooming diagonally out into an unknown and infinite universe.
- A willingness to abandon your comfort zone - for the Glider to keep moving, the mushrooms have to die. Hopefully this won't be true of most groups that I'm a part of, but it's a timely reminder, especially now, not to let safety and familiarity keep you from pushing your boundaries.
- Plus it looks really cool :)
I think it's no coincidence that a lot of nerds tend to get enthusiastic about self-improvement and "life hacks". Technology means building things. Building *on* things. Improving, optimizing. The slow gradual accumulation of countless individually-insignificant changes to keep moving, accelerating, in the right direction. The self-same impulses and processes apply when you're trying to exercise, or eat better, or improve your concentration, or your ability to practice a skill, or pretty much anything out of lifehacker, /r/lifeprotips, or George's excellent newsletter. It doesn't matter how slow you're going, so long as you're going in the right direction and you don't stop. Or, to quote a wise monkey, "It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you got to do it every day."
But, at the same time, while your personal improvement might be gradual and glacial, you are standing on the shoulders of giants. One of the things I love about mathematics is how every theorem relies on others, a rigorous chain of proof stretching all the way back to first axioms like "There exists a number zero". The stereotypical inquisitive toddler who responds to every answer with "Why?" will get exhausted long before their mathematician parent - it's proofs all the way down. The process of building a web service from the ground-up has brought home to me how true this is in technology, too - how every piece of software relies on a long history of tools, processes, and accumulated knowledge, right back to Ada Lovelace and punch-cards (sidenote, here, to share the awesome story of Grace Hopper and "the first bug"). Looking forward, it's heartening to think that, if you make a good enough thing, people will still be using it centuries after you die - where "thing" might be as prosaic as a software library, or as a intangible as a paradigm or a thought process - I promise you, in the entire future of the human race, we will never forget Pythagorus' name. You are collaborating just as much with the entire history of hackers as you are with Robin and Leslie at the next desk over.
It's about making something positive, improving the world, contributing, however insignificantly. An ex of mine could never understand why I wasn't terrified at the notion that there was no God, no afterlife, that this was all there was. I don't think I ever adequately communicated my philosophy - that we're only here for a short time, and all there is is what we make, so our life's best purpose is to make the world a better place for everyone else who comes after, however we can. If I can know that some fraction of humanity will be some fraction happier because of things I made or said or did, I'll consider that I've done a good job. It's not just about technology (though that consumes a large chunk of my time and passion, and, short of politics, is the best means I know for effecting wide-ranging increases in happiness) - it's about living your life in a way that increases the net happiness of everyone that you can, and enables and encourages them to do the same., and to pay it forward We can't all be Terry Pratchett, but he's a fine target to aim for.
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What have I been:
- doing: Enjoying the glorious sunshine in the green in West Hampstead, ignoring the bugs, and wondering why we don't have citywide free WiFi yet
- reading, fiction: The Disorderly Knights, Book 3 of The Lymond Chronicles. And this is where the story *really* starts...
- reading, nonfiction: The entire back catalogue of Still Drinking, based of these two glorious clusters of truth-bombs
- listening to: Standards, by Into It/Over It. Thanks Chris!
- watching: Mr. Robot. I've heard great reviews, and so far, I'm impressed, but only at the research. It feels like the characters actually know their rootkits from their ROMs from their RxJava - no "GUI interface using Visual Basic to track the killer's IP Address" here. But that's as far as it goes - the villains feel one-dimensional, the pacing is erratic and baffling, and, halfway through the season, I'm still not clear on why I should back the "heroes" or feel any form of tension or peril for them.
- building: Laura J, my intrepid entrepreneurial cousin, had a flabbergastingly good idea for a web service - one of those things that, when you think about it, you're stunned that it didn't exist already. I'm working with her to get the tech side all set up, and very much enjoying diving into the world outside Amazon's tooling bubble. Except that, well, I'm building everything on AWS, so it's not *that* different - but hey, Docker and SSL and Load Balancers, oh my!
- thankful for: Aside from the obvious (the stupendous levels of privilege that allow me not only to move halfway across the world, but to get paid for my trouble), I'm thankful that I'm going to see my Dad soon, and that he will *finally*, after nearly half a decade, meet one of the most important people in my life. And that we're gonna sing shitty karaoke and have a good time :)
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