
You can't tell people anything - frankus
http://thefarmers.org/Habitat/2004/04/you_cant_tell_people_anything.html
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breck
"When people ask me about my life's ambitions, I often joke that my goal is to
become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done.
Mainly that's about being able to do things without having to explain them
first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this will
be a major labor saving improvement."

I say the same thing except I'm serious.

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migpwr
I didn't read the piece but your comment really made me laugh... thanks for
that!

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acgourley
This seems like the logical conclusion you arrive at being an engineer who
can't effectively communicate with non-engineers. Although it's definitely
true that it's easier to show people a product rather than explain it ahead of
time.

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jhancock
Although the "communication skills" shortage you refer to is well understood
amongst engineering types and a real problem on its own, I don't think this is
solely to blame for the article's premise. For inventions that change behavior
a lot, its not even enough to show a product, that still only allows the other
person to see what they see, not what you see.

Email has been around for ages (the 60s in various early form), but it wasn't
widely considered a killer app until the early to mid 90s.

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johnm
On your first point, that's why things like the super-short "did you know that
XYZ could do this...?" type of demos work great. Of course, see e.g. Kathy
Sierra's writings for how to balance.

Re: your email example... You're missing the issue of network effects.

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jhancock
I'm not missing the issue of network effects. Or rather I'm not now as I can
see clearly after the fact ;). But if you asked me in 1987 about email, I
would have answered different. I think this is the whole point of the article.
It is difficult to explain the future. Even the original inventors can't do
it. Anyway, I think it was a nice article and worthy of some thought.
Sometimes it is nice to know that maybe the right approach is just "do" and
let the future do the explaining.

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gaika
You can't see what you do not believe. That's just your hardware limitation.
If there's no logical model for something your perception will filter it out.
If you can read this you probably knew it already.

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yters
Is it possible for people to surpass their hardware limits, like self adaptive
FPGAs, or are all our limits hardwired?

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gaika
Meditate until you top level pattern matching code is not influencing your low
level perception and new patterns are formed based on the true inputs.

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michaelneale
Sounds like a line edited out of the original Matrix ;)

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kaens
Perhaps, but it's probably true. I don't know about other people, but I've
been able to identify (at least I think I have been able to) some of the parts
of my thought process that do pattern-matching through meditation.

It's a very strange experience, but wonderful (on multiple levels).

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sanj
I call the the "imagination gap".

When I was giving advice about the fbFund I had a number of queries about
whether the applicants should build prototypes or film screencasts or just
spend time writing their proposal.

My advice was always to do whatever it took to minimize the imagination gap.
Figure out what shows off the idea in as concrete a form as possible. It is
hard work to extrapolate in a way that is identical to the person with the
original idea. Make it as easy as possible.

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delackner
This is it exactly. When I first started at my current company my boss and I
did not share a first language. And only just barely a second language. But we
did share a sense of imagination, and we were astounded many times to see that
in a meeting with several people present, he and I would be easily layering
our ideas, while the other people in the room (all sharing his first language)
needed to see very explicit drawings before hesitantly seeming to see what we
were seeing.

Without imagination, the world is entirely composed of that which you have
already seen. How boring.

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yters
I agree. The best products are more about their potential, i.e. the internet,
than a particular concrete, killer app. But it is easiest to understand a
killer app and hardest to understand something's true potential.

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pmjordan
Show, don't tell. If you can't show, tell a story. Easier said than done!

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d0mine
There are people who can _sell_ you anything. And it does not require any
_understanding_ on buyer's part.

Don't tell, sell it.

