gathering
Lately I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. I'll write down some opinions it once I'm done, but part of I have read has really stuck in my mind.

(At least part of) the story is set in the time of Newton, Hooke, and other "Natural Philosophers" (read: "scientist", before there was such a term). These exceptionally bright people seem to just wander around aimlessly discovering the nature of, well, nature: imagine what an inquisitive mind could have done before the development of optics, or chemistry, or even plain old mechanics. Then they'd get together in clubs like the Royal Society, compare notes and debate ideas, making history without really considering it happening.

I see a real parallel between what was going on then in science and what is happening now with computers. It's still relatively easy for amateurs to break new ground and topple the establishment (I always think of brad hacking away in a dorm room), especially because the field is relatively young and is changing rapidly.

So I keep thinking about how what is happening now will be looked back upon. Aside from the obvious things -- I'm of the youngest people who still remember what the world was like before the internet -- I wonder if this churning vat* of dotcoms will be remembered just like the bustling trade center of Amsterdam, and how I am analogously one of those nameless merchants who, in his own small way, contributed to the great mass of technological shift that is happening.

And what I also think about is how we don't really have a Royal Society. The internet has pretty much replaced a local community for hackers, for better or for worse. So when, for example, Jim Gettys today mentions "Tridge" being interested in something I know he's referring to a dude in Australia whose face I'd never seen before I just looked up his webpage now.

What we do have instead are the occasional conventions. It makes sense that gatherings like Foo Camp, despite the hangers-on, prompts real bursts of motivation and creativity: hundreds of years ago, getting together was a much more central aspect of discovery.

So all of that was in my mind this week when we had our weekly gathering -- which Eric had originally intended to be very much like the coffeehouses of long ago -- and I got to introduce Graydon to Josh and see him thanked for xdelta. I think the bay area is good for this sort of thing.


* You could say it produces "bubbles".