A Beautiful Madness
Patrick Lannigan - Summer 2002
It was another subzero day in Ottawa. Another Saturday at work. I didn’t mind coming in on
the weekend because
without any interruptions I could get a lot done. I worked for six hours
or so, until the guilt of abandoning my family overpowered my ambition. It
was about 3PM when I took the elevator downstairs and began to
prepare myself for the extreme weather. I was about to leave when I saw Dan, a
fellow technical consultant, approaching the building.
We made some small talk about the near-arctic weather but for some reason
the subject of our chat turned to this new thing called “the internet”.
I wasn't prepared for what happened. He had an attack. An attack of
the beautiful madness. All this talk about the internet must have
triggered it. I’d seen
this before. When someone, especially in high tech, becomes powerless over their
enthusiasm and a highly contagious madness spreads from person to person, city to city, country to
country.
Dan wasn't physically dragging me to his office, he was using an invisible
tractor beam. Talking only when he wasn’t filling his lungs with air, Dan’s pace quickened down the hall until he burst into his office and dropped
his 250 lbs into the chair. A minute or so later the scratchy modem noises
started. That's when I saw it for the first time. I can't say I was taken by its
beauty, but this browser thing had me spellbound. We only had to
click our mouse to be transported around the world to different web
servers. Some of the websites even had pictures. That was 1994.
I don't see much of the beautiful madness these days (summer 2002). The last
beautiful madness attack I had was over Google. That was many years
ago. I had it bad. In retrospect I was worse than those extreme evangelists.
I pushed my opinion about Google on everybody I knew. "Convert"
I would demand, "change your old search engine ways". They did
convert. All of them did.
So where's the next Google? Where's the next killer app? I long for those days, when showing people a new technology felt like you were putting on a magic show. The days when I demonstrated a new piece of software, and heard gasps in the audience.
Will the magic happen again? Will there ever be another
killer app like the dozens I've known in the past? I hope so. I
hope that my question "will there be another killer app" will
sound
as stupid a few years from now as saying "everything
that can be invented, has been invented", which is what Charles Duell
said in 1899 when he tried to close the patent office. (see
postfix for why this text is struck through.
© Patrick Lannigan, 2003
patrick at lannigan dot org
¯¯postfix¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Constantly questioning. That is the modus operandi of any good writer or analyst. I began to question how Charles Duell could have spoken the words that have been attributed to him for over 100 years (regarding his desire to close the patent office in 1899). My hunch was right. Unlike other famous quotes like "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out" attributed to Decca Recording after they rejected the Beatles, in 1962, or "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom," attributed to physicist Robert Millikan, there is no primary research that verifies Charles Duell's words. I'm a bit red-faced for having written it in the first place, but it is an excellent example of how a single falsehood, which is grouped alongside a number of known truths, can mislead.
I could have left my last paragraph, above, as it was. Who would have known the difference!? Most people have seen the quote attributed to Charles Duell before - so they wouldn't question it - right? I guess it's an integrity thing. I couldn't live with those words anymore. Besides - I at least get to expose the falsehood - and that's a nickel's worth of joy I'll take any day.
THE LESSON: Constantly question. Verify, verify, verify.
©Patrick Lannigan
patrick at lannigan dot org
googleprod