Chris Gulker: Lone Genius Hackers

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 05:36:01 GMT

Tech problem: gulker.com's trusty Radio blogging software needs a bit of expert attention. We'll be off the air for a bit - not that anyone is likely to notice given our current infrequent update schedule. We have fantasies about drifting into lone genius blogger status... just fantasies, mind you...

Sun, 05 Dec 2004 03:31:05 GMT

Joe Ferris: this sketch by Rick Whitehurst was in my email tonight. Brought Joe right back. Happy holidays, Joe, wherever you may be...

Sat, 14 Feb 2004 06:10:23 GMT

Joe Ferris links on gulker.com:

Weblog posts:

http://www.gulker.com/2004/01/30.html

http://www.gulker.com/2004/01/31.html

Prototype Joe Ferris home page (1998):

http://www.gulker.com/photos/1998/ferris/art.html

FYI, for Ferris fans... I'm one...

Sat, 14 Feb 2004 02:28:26 GMT

Joe Ferris' Wake: Doug E. Lewis writes that Joe's wake will be held Saturday, February 21st from 1 to 5 PM at The Old Town pub in Pasadena. No-host bar, food provided by volunteers (see Doug if you want to pitch in). Open mike for musicians, spoken word and whatever moves friends and colleagues. Doug asks that all spread the word...

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 17:14:53 GMT

The gentlemen of letters (see Sam Pepys' blog, below) were indeed the original bloggers. They lived in the first age in which a reliable network - European postal service - was available. The likes of Pepys (1633 - 1703), Galileo (1564 - 1642), Locke (1632 - 1704) and Descartes (1546 - 1650) could, and did, write to their contemporaries. They also sent each other essays, papers and occasionally whole books.

A custom began, in which the recipient of a missive from one of these savants would call friends and interested observers together in salons or coffee houses to read the letters and sometimes draft a response. Thus was born the Royal Society in England, and similar groups elsewhere on the continent.

For the first time in history, discovery was shared, and investigators, then known as natural philosophers, could rely on other bright and inquisitive minds to vet their work, suggest improvements and so forth. The system was remarkably like open source software development and other modern phenomena that have arisen from our new global network. Even more remarkable, I think, given that perhaps only 10% of the world could read in the 17th century.

I am of the opinion that blogging and related network communications are giving rise to a new age of letters: the first one helped spark the Renaissance which pretty much completely altered the political, religious and economic fabric of the West, if not the whole world. One can only wonder what the results of the new network will be....

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 16:56:53 GMT

Samuel Pepys' diary is now available as a 'blog, complete with RSS feed. The diarist of the events that arose on the occasion of the first global network - postal service - is now available on the newest global network. Nice...

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 04:34:11 GMT

Bill Joy on open source: "Open source is fine, but it doesn't take a worldwide community to create a great operating system. Look at Ken Thompson creating Unix, Stephen Wolfram writing Mathematica in a summer, James Gosling in his office making Java. Now, there's nothing wrong with letting other people help, but open source doesn't assist the initial creative act. What we need now are great things. I don't need to see the source code. I just want a system that works." Lone genius hackers see thing differently...

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 04:45:25 GMT

Couldn't buy this stuff if you wanted to. Greg Bryant, Workspot co-founder and quintessential innovator, responds to an Infoworld article cited below. The global network may be the best idea ever, imho... where else would you get such an impassioned, and informed, exchange of ideas? And please, everyone, feel free to rant on that theme...

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 02:48:27 GMT

Lone Genius Blogger circa 13th century: Mechthild of Magdeburg was a beguine mystic who kept a vernacular diary of her spiritual revelations that was widely circulated by copying out in longhand. She was a blogger in a time before printing and postal service, much less electronic networks, existed.

She journaled her experience including visionary insight into spirituality, love songs and responses to critics who reacted inamicably to the notion of a woman writing about anything, much less faith. She wrote from her 30s until the time of her death.

Her writing is collected in the book 'Flowing light of the Godhead', which contains 267 passages ('posts') from a few lines to a few pages long. What we call blogging is actually a very old form...

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 20:10:34 GMT

Lone Genius Hacker of all time? Sir Isaac Newton was, in the words of James Gleick "born into a world of darkness, obscurity and magic; led a strangely pure and obsessive life, lacking parents, lovers and friends; quarreled bitterly with great men who crossed his path; veered at least once to the brink of madness; cloaked his work in secrecy; and yet discovered more of the essential core of human knowledge than anyone before or after. He was chief architect of the modern world."

Newton's magnus opus Principia was printed in a run of only 1000 copies: almost no one in Newton's time understood it, and Newton quarreled publicly with the few who did, including Gottfried Leibniz, who had simultaneously and independently discovered the Calculus. Newton was an obsessive loner who rarely emerged from his room while at Cambridge. He secretly conducted experiments in alchemy, and doubted that Jesus was divine and a part of the Trinity (a heretical viewpoint in his time).

But, by redefining the world as a place where reliable laws of physics, governed by mathematics could be repeatedly observed and verified, Newton set the stage for everything from space probes to global networks. Even Einstein was an outspoken admirer, comprehending the leap Newton had made from a world dominated by alchemy, mysticism and ignorance. I see the first post was popular with regular readers... will have to research some of the candidates...

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 16:18:59 GMT

'Lone Genius Hacker': I previously wrote about the notion of a lone genius Weblogger. During our hiking vacation I came across accounts of the lives of a number of people that I think illustrate the principal of the lone genius who, while he/she works in obscurity, nevertheless manage to have a very large effect on the world.

So I'm starting a Lone Genius category on the 'blog, where I will offer brief bios of some out-there lone genius types. Previously, I noted the life of Henry David Thoreau. Today's entry is bluesman Robert Johnson.

Johnson, born in 1911, lived 27 years and recorded 29 songs. As a teenager, he was said by bluesman Son House to have had little proficiency at the guitar (though he also played harmonica and piano). After a stint playing Mississippi juke joints, Johnson improved so much that rumors begin to circulate of a deal with the devil, famously set forth in Johnson's much-recorded song 'Cross Road Blues'.

Johnson is considered one of the most expressive bluesmen ever: his influence on later forms like Rock and Roll - everyone from the Butterfield Blues Band to Led Zeppelin to the Rolling Stones - is profound. Though he left only 29 recorded songs, many of them are classics and mainstays of blues band play lists. Johnson is thought to have been murdered by a jealous husband in 1938.

I think its only reasonable to suspect that there are plenty of contemporaries at work in the world who are doing the same sorts of things, some of whom may actually be blogging as they go along...