

I have a troubling relationship with time - KimberleyScott
http://www.randomactsofsentience.com/2012/09/i-have-troubling-relationship-with-time.html

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jaylevitt
President John Tyler was born in 1790; his grandsons are still alive:

[http://kottke.org/12/01/president-john-tylers-grandsons-
are-...](http://kottke.org/12/01/president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-
alive)

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KimberleyScott
Thanks for all the comments. And I hear all of you.

I lost my step-kids due to my "transition" some 15 years ago and being "the
end of the line" so to speak, I was feeling a little maudlin when I wrote it.
(The wine helped)

And now I'm over the almost loss of my mother recently I'll be working hard on
documenting my memories and code and...

On a side note, I am working on a "diary" of my transition from 1956 to the
present. If it works out I'll be making an eBook of it. Hopefully that will
add something to "His^h^h^hOurstory."

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zdw
People sometimes need to be reminded of perspective.

The truth is that we all play parts in a grand, millennium spanning
conversation of all of humanity.

Writing and contributing to that conversation in the best way we can is
probably the most compelling driver for me personally.

You'll contribute far more by participating in the conversation (releasing
code, or papers that describe how things work) than trying to keep everything
to yourself.

~~~
delinka
First, I find that every time I want to share the knowledge in my head,
someone else has done it "better" (more eloquently, whatever.) Next, I have
the most difficult time attempting to put my personal understanding into words
that work for other people.

Perhaps my (self-described) unique perspective could be valuable to some
future archaeologist, but my motivation, like so many of my contemporaries,
comes from my environment. Therefore, it is hard to get motivated to
contribute to the millennial conversation. Further, it's hard to think that I,
individually, should even be motivated to contribute.

~~~
sillysaurus
I feel similarly.

 _I find that every time I want to share the knowledge in my head, someone
else has done it "better"_

The trick with that is:

1) It doesn't matter to your readers. In other words, the "better" version
only matters to someone who comes across your page if they've already seen it.

2) If someone else's work is truly better, then it's fine to quote directly
from it. For example I will never surpass the quality of Feynman's lectures,
but there are still plenty of people who haven't been exposed to his work. The
solution is to organize and cross-reference his explanations in ways that are
more accessible for those who want to understand more on those topics. It's
more important to explain something well than to come up with an original
explanation.

I think ultimately it comes down to us worrying too much about being wrong, or
somehow inadequate/ineloquent, or simply feeling like what we care about
doesn't really matter to most people. But there are seven billion of us now.
Even if what we say is irrelevant to the people in our environment, it may be
a gem for someone else.

I'm going to try "writing to my younger self" or "writing to people of the
future". It seems like a good method of boiling away passing fads and other
irrelevancies.

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kellyreid
Nothing troubling about it. Enjoyable :)

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CodeCube
It's going to be interesting to see how future generations' memories now that
everything is being documented in such detail with the internet.

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KimberleyScott
Oh. And while I think of it, I have added a bunch of memories in the
"Interesting Stuff about Kim" page.

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st3fan
Time is the fire in which we al burn.

