Cringely and Paul Graham

I had decided to dedicate a post on the list of my favorite writers/columnists. But today I read two great essays written by two of them in last week. Here are some favorite quotes of mine from the article.

I read Bob Cringely's weekly articles. He is certainly not from my generation. But he is a rare commentator of technology who is venerable and contemporary at the same time. Read his recent column.

This emerging world will be very different in many ways. How many of these kids expect to someday earn a pension? Surveys show that few of them expect Social Security to even survive until their retirement -- if they can ever retire at all. Where we went through a couple career changes they'll go through half a dozen or more in a life that will outlast ours by 20 years. Growing up is changing from becoming what you will be to becoming what you will be for a while, and that has a huge impact on the educational requirements placed on our society.

... His comment on what "education" really is, is just perfect.

Part of any answer is figuring out what education is for. We use it for paying dues, for passing time until a certain level of maturity is reached. We use it for networking and finding mates. We use it for acting goofy at the expense of our parents. And we use it, to some extent, to learn what we need to know to get by.

The question that has so far gone unanswered in this series, then, is how will we learn in the future?

Do read the rest.

I can't say enough about the influence of Paul Graham's essays on me. Sometimes he just gets it. Last week he wrote about his list of heroes. Here are some inspiring quotes:

About Leonardo da Vinci...

His most impressive work, to me, is his drawings. They're clearly made more as a way of studying the world than producing something beautiful. And yet they can hold their own with any work of art ever made. No one else, before or since, was that good when no one was looking.

About P.G. WodeHouse...

But Wodehouse has something neither of them did. He's at ease. .... But Wodehouse didn't give a damn what anyone thought of him. He wrote exactly what he wanted.

About Isaac Newton...

You only get one life. Why not do something huge? The phrase "paradigm shift" is overused now, but Kuhn was onto something. And you know more are out there, separated from us by what will later seem a surprisingly thin wall of laziness and stupidity. If we work like Newton.