Diego Basch

The launch of the iPad spurred gigabytes of reviews and opinions from lots of people, most of whom have not seen the device yet. I’m not going to talk about it, instead I’ll offer a counterpoint to two very insightful posts from Alex Payne and Mark Pilgrim.

The gist of their concern is that if they had grown up with an iPad instead of a real computer, they would not have become programmers. They argue that the iPad is a device aimed at the majority who want things to just work and have no desire to look under the hood. It’s not meant to be programmable or “tinkered with” by the end user. Mark reminisces, talking about his first computer:

I was 10. That was 27 years ago, but I still remember what it felt like when I realized that you — that I — could get this computer to do anything by typing the right words in the right order and telling it to RUN and it would motherfucking run.

His story is similar to mine. I also got my first computer 27 years ago. It was a Texas TI99/4A, and I felt the same awe. I spent an entire summer obsessed with it, doing nothing but programming little games and generally trying to understand how it worked. I had always been fascinated by technology, but after I encountered computers I knew I had found my calling.

Now, let’s play devil’s advocate and imagine the TI99 had not been programmable. Flashback to three years before, when I begged my parents to get me the Atari 2600, the extremely entertaining but closed gaming console. To quote Bryan Adams, I played it until my fingers bled. I was really curious about how it worked, but I could do nothing about it. Still, someone had designed it and programmed it. Someone programmed the first computer. Someone built the first computer from scratch. Charles Babbage came up with the concept of a programmable computer decades before electricity was available in people’s homes.

To me, this lament sounds a bit like the music industry saying that there will be less motivation for people to become musicians if they cannot make money by selling infinite copies of recordings of their instrumental prowess (or mastery of the auto-tune). This raises the question, is this a problem and if so why?

Clearly tinkering is as old as humanity, otherwise we would be stuck in the stone age. As I grew up in Argentina in the 70s we had our own Lego-like system of building blocks called Rasti. They were pretty simple, but you could build pretty much anything you could envision provided that your parents could get you enough block sets. Today there are much more advanced tinkering systems such as Lego Mindstorms. Perhaps if it had been available as I was growing up I would be a robotics engineer today.

Like I said, the above articles have a number of good points, especially the ridiculous prosecution of DVD Jon for minding his own business at home. But this is not the sunset of tinkering that Mark fears. There are more tools for tinkering than ever before in the history of humanity. True, they may not be commonly available to random kids in middle-class homes as programmable computers have been over the past few decades. Does that mean that there will be fewer programmers? No. I know numerous examples of excellent programmers that did not see a computer until college. Some of them simply had grown up too early. Others came from families who could not afford computers until later.

To conclude: as long as there is a need for software that can only be created by humans, there will be enough programmers. This is guaranteed by two things: the fact that we live in a market economy and, more importantly, the fact that the desire for tinkering is something that comes from our ancestors. Right now all around the world there are kids creating, building, programming and imagining. A lot of them do not have access to computers.

I had enjoyed Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide so I decided to read his previous book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

This book is a collection of anecdotes about several artists who intuitively anticipated recent discoveries about how the brain works. The author admits to not being a scientist, but he does make an effort to try to understand the current state of neuroscience, and link ideas from artists such as Stravinsky or Cézanne to modern experiments and academic papers. These links seem a little arbitrary and far-fetched at times, but this doesn’t detract from the book. Of course Proust was not a neuroscientist, and obviously the title is not to be taken literally.

What Lehrer tries to do is to build a bridge between what he feels are two separate worlds: art and science. This is an ambitious task, and the reader may disagree with the premise. Regardless, he succeeds at covering an array of topics such as the formation of memories and their relation to smell and taste, the perception of the self, language and vision. If you are a scientist in the fields of biology or medicine you will probably be familiar with most of this research, as some of it is not cutting edge (for example, the linguistic and cognitive research of Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker). Still, Lehrer is a very good writer and every chapter is enjoyable. I particularly liked the story of the French chef Auguste Escoffier and his pursuit of deliciousness, which ties into the discovery of monosodium glutamate (MSG) by Kikunae Ikeda in Japan.

If you are the kind of person who enjoys food for thought (almost literally in this case), I would imagine that you’d like this book too. After reading it I checked the reviews on Amazon and was surprised to see many negative reviews by people who point out factual errors, or criticize Lehrer because of his young age and purported lack of experience. Just like wine with an expensive label, I’m sure this book would have more favorable reviews if it had been written by a white-haired academician. It is clear that Lehrer is genuinely curious and obsessed with understanding the human brain, and I personally look forward to reading his next book on the subject.

Here are some books about society and human nature that I read in the past few months. This list is mostly meant for myself, so I remember them. Hopefully it will be useful to others as well.

• Spent by Geoffrey Miller. Excellent book about evolutionary psychology, sex and consumerism. The author has a good sense of humor so it’s a very enjoyable read. It discusses topics such as intelligence plus the Big Five personality traits. One of Miller’s main points is that rampant consumerism is not inevitable or particularly desirable. Rather, it is one mechanism we use to send status signals to others (something we evolved to do). He advocates moving towards more efficient mechanisms that are better for ourselves and the world. Some of the suggestions are a bit impractical but worth thinking about. If you are interested in understanding human nature, it’s a must-read. If you haven’t, I recommend reading The Selfish Gene first.
• Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. Fascinating account of a young sociologist’s years spent embedded in a Chicago gang. It’s an autobiographical tale that paints an insider’s picture of a world that’s foreign to most middle-class people. Poverty, drug dealership and a long-lasting friendship. It reads like a novel and there’s a project to make a movie based on it. I could not put it down once I started it.
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. There has been a bit of a backlash against Gladwell lately but you should not let that dissuade you from enjoying Outliers. In this book he discusses the factors that make some people extremely successful: their environments, inherited traits and personal motivations. It’s a very subjective book, Gladwell is not a scientist and his assertions have to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, it’s very well written and enjoyable.
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Economists used to believe that markets and economics were driven by rational consumer behavior. This book illustrates not only the fact that humans are much less rational than we would like to believe, but also that our irrationality can be exploited predictably. It contains a collection of fascinating social experiments and studies, and should be mandatory reading for anyone working in marketing. I cannot recommend it enough.
• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. We have different mechanisms for decision-making, some more primitive than others. When should we trust our gut feelings, how long should we evaluate our choices rationally and why? This book analyzes decisions from the point of view of the latest findings in neuroscience. Lehrer backs his numerous anecdotes with scientific studies. A good complement to Predictably Irrational.
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A timeless classic, and the only fiction book on this list. I included it because it is a great illustration of the Nouveau riche in contrast with “old money” in terms of how they seek to attain and maintain social status. It would be interesting to read it after Spent.
• Sway by Ori and Rom Brafman. Another book along the lines of Predictably Irrational. If you liked Dan Ariely’s book and still want more, this book is a tasty dessert after a good meal.