Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Back in the 1980’s, when Apple was still a small company making personal computers(!),   Steve Jobs famously tried to lure John Sculley from Pepsi saying: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Change the world. Make a dent in the universe. Everyone graduates hoping to do those things. And then we feel very disappointed with the work we actually do. But we shouldn’t feel that way, wrote Richard Feynman to a former student, Koichi Manom in a letter dated February 3rd, 1966. Manom had written to Feynman that he was working on “a humble and down-to-earth type of problem”. To which Feynman replied: “It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems.” Feynman acknowleges that the aura around him might have put pressure on his students to set unrealistic goals for themselves: “You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed t...

“If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.”  -          Larry Page, Google’s founder I saw this reference to the paradox of the huge problem in a blog by an ex-Apple designer: “A problem that feels sufficiently insurmountable will appear the product of natural law, to be accepted rather than challenged.” That is so true. If it’s insurmountable, we just learn to work with that as one of the constraints. And soon don’t even think of it as a constraint…and so even when the time is ripe and the tools available, we don’t attack the problem. Sort of like that elephant that could be held by a chain when he was young but doesn’t realize he could break it with ease when he is older! I guess that’s why the solution is eventually almost always found by an unknown guy, a non-specialist, someone too ignorant to know that it was an insurmountable problem! On the other hand, it’s the huge probl...

"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." - Clay Shirky That sounds cynical. It also sounds true. But ever wondered why things are that way? It’s not only because of the preserve-the-problem-and-keep-making-money mindset at work. Things are a lot more complicated than that. Take the example where a company can eliminate the problem instead of just fixing things when they go wrong. If each and every company goes with this approach (eradicate the problem) then, it will make money only until the problem is eradicated. But what does the company do after the problem is eradicated? They’ll have to find another problem to solve. Will they succeed at finding that next solution? Not necessarily. If they don’t, the company would close down (remember, the older problem they fixed is now eradicated). And then their employees will be without jobs. Which do you prefer? Problem eliminated, but unemployment added? Or jobs retained and cure available, but...