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Thoreau 2.0

331 pointsby anu_guptaover 11 years ago

14 comments

pixelmonkeyover 11 years ago
I thought this section was particularly good:<p>&quot;&quot;&quot; He was obsessed with how complexity can creep into unexpected corners of your life, disguised as necessity. He gives the example of a farmer who convinces himself he must eat meat in order to stay strong. Since meat is expensive, the farmer tills more land in order to afford it. And the harder he works, the hungrier he gets, in a vicious spiral.<p>[...] What I had thought was a convenience had actually been the foundation for a little pyramid of anxieties.<p>[...] I&#x27;m intrigued by this idea of complexity being something adversarial, that sneaks into your life, like a cockroach, and you have to fight to eradicate. &quot;&quot;&quot;<p>Doesn&#x27;t just apply to life, but also to software and startups.<p>I&#x27;ve been running a tech startup about as long as Maciej (though with a very different path &#x2F; business), and I sometimes wonder about the complexities we now take for granted, 4 years in.<p>Not just complexities of our business, but also the infrastructure we&#x27;ve re-built, re-factored, re-architected, etc. over the years and our own understanding of the problem space we&#x27;ve &quot;mastered&quot;.<p>We&#x27;ve assembled this tapestry of tools, technologies, processes, cultural practices, customers, partners, etc. And as software engineers, we have &quot;simply accepted&quot; a certain level of complexity.<p>When the company first started in 2009, it was just two guys sending keystrokes into a fresh vim buffer. No &quot;funding&quot;, no &quot;process&quot;, no &quot;brand&quot; -- just creation. I think this is what creates nostalgia for the early days of a company&#x27;s life -- it&#x27;s the purity and simplicity of it.<p>I wish I had gotten Maciej&#x27;s advice earlier and kept a journal.
tptacekover 11 years ago
He&#x27;s got something interesting to say about the event itself, too:<p><a href="https://blog.pinboard.in/2013/09/xoxo_talk_notes/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.pinboard.in&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;xoxo_talk_notes&#x2F;</a>
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kennon42over 11 years ago
If you liked Maciej&#x27;s talk, you should definitely check out his blog: <a href="http://idlewords.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;idlewords.com</a><p>Warning: kiss the next several hours goodbye because he&#x27;s simply an outstandingly interesting and funny writer - imagine something like a cross between Bill Bryson and Douglas Adams and you wouldn&#x27;t be too far off the mark.
justinatorover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m not trying to be snarky, but, &quot;Being an Entrepreneur&quot;, and, &quot;Be very much like Thoreau&quot;are two very disparate goals.<p>I would very much like everyone to read Walden - it&#x27;s a wonderful, incredible, life-changing book. But the feeling I get at the end is not, &quot;Man, I should start a business, where people can post up images of things they want! And then other people can see if they want them! And then, then! We can advertise!&quot;<p>The feeling you get, after reading the book - well, the feeling <i>I</i> got was more, &quot;I&#x27;m still in this system, I want out, I can&#x27;t, the world is truly monstrous&quot;. We can all live in our own little cabins in the woods for a little while, we can all do our own little civil disobedience - but like young adults, most of us grow out of it, because to hold this course is very hard and greed is a very easy trap to fall into.<p>If you like Thoreau, one of the most obvious path to take would then be Emerson and his essays. They&#x27;re all wonderful, but I don&#x27;t know what lessons you learn from them can be applied to &quot;start a business with someone elses money that hopefully goes public&quot;, except that that itself is a fool&#x27;s errand. I don&#x27;t know what either would say about social media or whatever it&#x27;s called know, execept that it&#x27;s simply abstracts the real nature of actual interaction, into something that&#x27;s lost the important parts of it. What would Thoreau say about working so long hours typing away at a keyboard? He would say that&#x27;s the worst thing at all: work only as much as you want, and no more. That&#x27;s a whole chapter in Walden. How many people here, truly do that?<p>Things to think about.<p>and also, what a lame title for a talk - there already WAS a Walden Two, and, for a sci-fi book, it&#x27;s not half bad. Kinda weak, but worth a read [0]<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Two" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Walden_Two</a><p>And it itself was a take on how to bring Thoreau idea into a community setting. It&#x27;s a little more than, &quot;Write journals!&quot;, and &quot;Know Yourself!&quot;. This talk - trying to take a masterpiece book, and apply it to your life, and trying to talk about it in bite-sized chunks.... it&#x27;s not working for me. Show me, don&#x27;t tell me.
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jamesbrittover 11 years ago
Some info about Henry David Thoreau, including how to correctly pronounce his last name.<p><a href="http://www.walden.org/thoreau" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.walden.org&#x2F;thoreau</a>
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alexpopescuover 11 years ago
&gt; This is a picture of me in 2009, right around when I started Pinboard. I&#x27;m standing on a balcony in Botosani county, Romania, in the poorest county in the European Union.<p>I had no idea (based on his name) that Maciej started Pinboard in Romania.
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graemeover 11 years ago
For those who do journaling: how do you do it?<p>Paper? Software? Either way, what kind of system do you have for organizing your notes?
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dotover 11 years ago
if you&#x27;re inspired by Thoreau, I recommend you check out Dick Proenneke&#x27;s little film &quot;Alone in the Wilderness&quot;.<p>First 10 minutes here: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss</a>
ansimionescuover 11 years ago
As a Romanian I feel compelled to say that we&#x27;re far from the poorest economy in EU&#x2F;Europe. Romania is still a standard Eastern European&#x2F;post-communist hellhole (although slowly improving), but not _that_ poor.
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lotsofcowsover 11 years ago
Very nicely written. Funny and interesting. I liked the mention of the slightly less scrupulous side of Thoreau too - he also mentions dining with friends quite a lot; his financial figures don&#x27;t add up; and his attitude toward the poor was not as enlightened as one would expect from an intelligent, educated, clever man.
throwawawover 11 years ago
Wow, he&#x27;s a really good writer. I didn&#x27;t expect that to be such a pleasure to read.
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gavinpcover 11 years ago
In the spirit of the OP&#x27;s message, I am bookmarking this page, with Ctrl+D.
dominotwover 11 years ago
Now I have portlandia song stuck in my head. Dream of the 90&#x27;s is alive in portland...portland.
bbgover 11 years ago
persevere