Random Precision

The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and counting.)

Some video still has to be complex to be valuable, but the logic of the old media ecoystem, where video had to be complex simply to be video, is broken. Expensive bits of video made in complex ways now compete with cheap bits made in simple ways. “Charlie Bit My Finger” was made by amateurs, in one take, with a lousy camera. No professionals were involved in selecting or editing or distributing it. Not one dime changed hands anywhere between creator, host, and viewers. A world where that is the kind of thing that just happens from time to time is a world where complexity is neither an absolute requirement nor an automatic advantage.

This is possibly the biggest advance in software development technology in the ten years I’ve been writing articles here.

Or, to put it another way, I’d go back to C++ before I gave up on Mercurial.

If you are using Subversion, stop it. Just stop. Subversion = Leeches. Mercurial and Git = Antibiotics. We have better technology now.

Gah. We are using CVS. We had hopes of someday *upgrading* to Subversion.

Hydrogen sulfide, for example, reacts with four molecules of FOOF to give sulfur hexafluoride, 2 molecules of HF and four oxygens. . .and 433 kcal, which is the kind of every-man-for-himself exotherm that you want to avoid at all cost. The sulfur chemistry of FOOF remains unexplored, so if you feel like whipping up a batch of Satan’s kimchi, go right ahead.

Chemistry can be funny.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it really is true: what seemed like barrage of really stupid people turned out with more careful inspection to be probably the most stupendous example of the tech divide you will see for, at minimum, a very long time. Not stupid people, but people who don’t know — perhaps can’t be bothered to know — about the address bar. People who use the internet for certain specific functions, and nothing beyond that. People who only want to know how to do what they need to do, and precisely nothing else.

Commentary on the ReadWriteWeb ‘Facebook login’ debacle. The real ‘digital divide’ isn’t financial, it’s generational and cognitive. Depressingly, it suggests there is no solution but the old-fashioned one: the new generation eventually displacing the one before.

I find it immensely helpful to work on the assumption that I am too stupid to get things right. This leads me to conservatively use what has already been shown to work, to cautiously test out new ideas before committing to them, and above all to prize simplicity.