Graham: Creativeness, Roles and Companies

Paul Graham is a great writer and has written many great essays. His most recent makes the argument that humans are "naturally" suited to not having bosses and not working in large companies (he talks about the difficulties of groups over 8 people). I agree that there are many downsides to working at companies and I could certainly write about the upsides and why I love what I'm doing at Google, but that wouldn't really be disagreeing with Paul. I don't take him to be saying that starting your own company is always better, just that you should be aware that organizations of greater than 8 people have a cost that should be taken into account. He talks about it as being a "restrictiveness" that takes toll on creativity and says that it is a particular problem for engineers. Which brings us to his dismissal of why others won't feel the pinch:
"The restrictiveness of big company jobs is particularly hard on programmers, because the essence of programming is to build new things. Sales people make much the same pitches every day; support people answer much the same questions; but once you've written a piece of code you don't need to write it again. So a programmer working as programmers are meant to is always making new things. And when you're part of an organization whose structure gives each person freedom in inverse proportion to the size of the tree, you're going to face resistance when you do something new."
I don't agree with this characterization of programmers as more creative than others. It is true that you never have to write the same code again (though how many times have you written authentication or a wrapper around an authentication class) but that doesn't mean that everything you write flows out of a brand new non-linear creative endeavour any more than a sales person's pitch is entirely new. Sales people sell services that have never existed (and then they get engineers to code this selling process into an online flow and move on to selling new stuff). Support folks get entirely new questions all the time (and then get engineers to code a system for responding to the easy stuff in an automated way). These folks that Paul singles out as being less restricted (or less "meant" to create) do all sorts of breathtaking new things too. I've seen support folks handle a very angry person with an issue with a brand new type of product by creating solution to the user's problem and explaining it in a way that is brilliant. I've seen sales folk come up with entirely new types of business arrangements or finding an elegant "in" to a relationship. It is certainly true that both of these groups do a bunch of work that is less creative, but so do engineers, even at startups (gasp!). These are the things that follow the creative move, things like debugging, unit testing, perfecting UI, etc. A good startup as well as a good big company, will value creation (and the stuff after the creation) in all of its people, not just the ones that are from Paul's chosen tribe.

Johnny Lee

Gotta say, Johnny Lee seems wicked cool. There is a lot to love. Goldman turned
me on to his homebrew head tracking Wii VR hack (see below), but his projects page is full of cool stuff (especially the community paint slingshot) and he's also funny (as evidenced by his videos and the names of his company -- Little Great Ideas -- and his blog -- Procrastineering.com). Watch the video, subscribe to the blog.

No-Knead Bread

Wow. I've been trying to make really good bread for many years with only mediocre bread as a result. About two years ago I clipped a great New York Times article about a fabulous new bread recipe. Unfortunately I didn't get the time to actually try the recipe until this past Christmas. And it is everything many people have described it as. Easy. Magnificent. Hard to screw up. Tasty. Moist. Fantastic. Mmmmm.

Since Christmas I have made it about seven times and I continue to be amazed by it. Now I've begun to try some modifications, but it has been hard to improve on the original. The basic trick is to use a very straightforward recipe (3cups flour, 1/4tsp yeast, 1 1/2cups water, stir together, let sit for 20hrs, fold down, let sit for two hours and then bake) with lots of water (when you fold the bread it will almost run through your fingers) lots of time (the first "sitting" is supposed to be at least 18hrs, but I have had good results with 24-30hrs) and a preheated dutch oven to bake (you bake in a covered pot that has been preheated with the oven to 450F, covered for 30mins and then uncovered for 20-30mins). Really, really simple recipe. Total working time (other than waiting) of about 15mins (including cleanup). And, really really good.

You should try it too. It will change the way you think about making bread. In case you need more encouragement, here is a video and flickr stream showing the results.

Photo by Alex.Lines

Update: I diverge from the recipe in two small ways. First, I use a bowl with plastic cling wrap for both of the risings (not cloth, which I have found to stick to the bread even when coated with flour) and I use parchment paper under the bread in the last rising so that I can easily pick it up and toss it into the hot pot. I tend to put the parchment paper in with the bread, though that doesn't make much of a difference either way, I just find it easier.

Pam Samuelson's Project

Professor Pamela Samuelson has an audacious project to re-imagine copyright law. She herself calls copyright reform "a fools errand" before eloquently justifying her project. The first results of her struggle are now online and worth reading. In trying to outline the fundamental aspects of an intellectual copyright regime and filling it in with the current copyright law, she gives a wonderful description of the Copyright Act in under 250 words.

1. subject matter: works of authorship
2. eligibility criteria for specific people and works:
a. who is eligible: the author (but special rule for works made for hire)
b. qualitative or other standards: original; fixed in a tangible medium; not a useful article
c. procedures: rights attach automatically as a matter of law from first fixation in a tangible medium; deposit is required but not as condition of protection; notice and registration are advisable for effective protection; registration necessary for US authors to bring infringement suits
3. exclusive rights: reproduce the work in copies; make derivative works; distribute copies to the public; publicly perform the work; publicly display the work; importation; attribution and integrity rights for works of visual art
4. duration: life of the author plus 70 years; 95 years from first publication
5. limitations and/or exceptions to those exclusive rights, including fair use, first sale, certain educational uses, and backup copying of computer programs, among others
6. infringement standard: infringement occurs when someone violates one of exclusive rights, and the activities do not fall within one of the exceptions or limitations to copyright; usual test applied for non-literal infringements is whether there is substantial similarity in protected expression that the alleged infringer appropriated from the copyright owner
7. remedies: preliminary and permanent injunctive relief; money damages; destruction of infringing copies; attorney fees; costs; criminal sanctions

Samuelson, Pamela, "Preliminary Thoughts on Copyright Reform" Utah Law Review, 2007 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1002676 (footnotes ommitted).

Congratulations to the Berkman Center

The Berkman Center starts its tenth anniversary celebration with a wonderful gift. Congratulations!

Innovation is Distracting?

I couldn't resist this. From a Reuters article about Yahoo!'s reaction to Google's mobile phone alliance announcement:

Google risks being distracted by technology rather than being focused on advertising revenue, the lifeblood of both Internet players, Boerries said.

Boerries is Marco Boerries, Yahoo!'s SVP of "Connected Life" and he meant that as a criticism. I am glad that Google is not just "distracted" by technology but instead focused on it and above all the user benefits it can bring. I know that many at Yahoo! feel the same way about their innovative company and I assume that Boerries was either misquoted (it isn't even really a direct quotation), taken out of context or misspoke.
Also, focusing on "advertising revenue" seems to incorrectly describe what both our companies do (I hope). Focusing on value for advertisers might be a better way to understand it.

Ranking Law Schools (another random methodology)

Lots of fun discussion about alternative (random) ways of ranking law schools. I like these discussions because I've never been a fan of law school rankings, so the more the merrier. Paul Caron (a tax law professor at University of Cincinnati) gives a ranked list based on a Google search for "law school." Mike Madison passes along Al Brophy's suggestion to rerun the search as ""law school" OR "school of law" OR "college of law" OR "law center" site:.edu" which changes the results. Here's another of just five.

The image above shows a graph of number of searches for five of the schools on Google (from Google Trends). If you click on the image, you'll go to the Google Trends page of the search and be able to see more info and play around with some of the variables.
Oh, and U.S. News and World Report also has a ranking.
BTW, in case you come from a law school that did well in the Google Trends ranking, this one may be sobering.
That's searches for jd versus mba.
Hat tip to Siva, from whose blog I first read about this (though I really don't endorse that blog or his habit of copying the entirety of the blog posts he links to).

Two Library Happenings

Both very happy. Paul Courrant, the University of Michigan's University Librarian, is blogging and Kenneth Crews is going to be Director of Columbia University Library's Copyright Advisory Office. What is a "Copyright Advisory Office?" From the release:
In his new position, Crews will advise on the application of copyright policies to teaching, research, and scholarly communication within the University. His responsibilities will include educating faculty, staff, and students about copyright through web-based information, publications, training programs, and conferences.
Two smart library folk. Glad that I'll get to hear them more.