Information Retrieval: Experience and Fantasy
April 15, 2015
I read “Cynicism and Experience.” I am retired, and I spend my days FURminating my ageing white boxer.
As I brushed, I recalled a statement in Gulliver’s Travels. You know, Swift, Jonny Boy, who wrote:
This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
Heartened, I then scanned some of copious flows of content from my Overflight system, which keeps me posted on information germane to search and content processing.
The system displayed a link to an article which urges me to use my experience in a non cynical way. I suppose Jonathan Swift’s first tutor told him to knock off with the characterizations of those who fell under his gaze.
He did not.
And, to be truthful, I am not likely to change my approach either.
The write up, which is the work of a person who seems to be much younger than I, recognizes that there are a few, not many, but a few benefits of having experience. In my case, I started work after I graduated from college in 1966 and have been chugging along through graduate school and beyond for—let’s see, what is the tally?—49 years.
I find the admonitions of those more youthful than I interesting. For example, I learned:
It can be fun to be the wise elder telling legends of the great monster you barely escaped in your younger days.
Yep, it is. The good news is that I have a wealth of information upon which to draw. The bad news, for those whom I find as “interesting” produce a cornucopia of triggers.
I also learned:
If you don’t share experience with others, your effectiveness will never scale beyond your own efforts. If you impart your battle scars on others without considering the circumstances in which they were inflicted, people who believe you will miss out on awesome things. The challenge of the experienced developer is to pass on wisdom without passing on dogma, but most developers think their personal experience should be enshrined as a best practice.
I have a tutor. My tutor winces each time I translate one of my observations into her native language. She said yesterday, “You should not reference the characters in the dialogs as drug dealers.”
Okay, I understand. When she is not working with me three times a week, she helps children, lost souls, and victims of assorted disasters.
I find the contrast between our world views a reminder that the ability to identify lessons, cautions, and warning signs a skill not everyone possesses.
Consequently I approach the content I monitor with a variation on my instructor’s selflessness. For example, I point out that Watson is an expensive effort that has essentially a low probability of hitting the revenue goal of $10 billion by 2020. I find the craziness of search and content processing firms funny. Explanations of how such and such technology can process “all an organization’s information” are my equivalent of the Three Stooges’ routine involving assorted face slaps. I often get tears in my eyes when I read the puffery on the LinkedIn enterprise search discussions. One amusing incident involves a new hire pontificating about the future of his company which has burned through $20 million plus and has been trampled by another outfit in the manner of Real Madrid defeating Granada.
The write up includes a puppy break. I like this type of puppy because it demonstrates what is beneath the surface of the entitlement-style approach of many ever so young experts, analysts, and commentators. Perhaps callow is a better word? No, jejune. I quite like jejune.
I found this passage suitable for presentation in a Typeslab graphic:
Imagine yourself as a wise elder, bitten once before by a project that used the Ook! programming language. The project was to build a social network specifically for people who hate social networks. You used the web framework Ook! on Oreos, but even then it turns out a language built around manually moving pointers around an array using grunts made it hard to build a modern web application. The project failed, and you learned.
Yes, imagine:
My mind generates an image of an unmarried teacher with the glorious name Miss Soapes. Yes, Ms. Soapes. She was good at giving me and everyone in her charge “advice.” I listened to her and rejected that which did not match my approach. She struck me as out of touch with reality. You know. The real world of conniving, disrespectful, sometimes cruel seventh graders.
I do not recall anyone in our seventh grade class heeding her suggestions which did not match the zoom zoom world of 1956. Oh, wait. Yes, there was one person who followed Miss Soapes’ plan for life. Lois had much promise but it ended in repetitive life abuse. Sad. Lois, like Miss Soapes, was sure of herself, but uninformed.
Call me prescient, but I have had an effective early warning system for advice delivered with apparent reasonableness. Yes, ex cathedra. Yes, a chimerical throne.
In the write up, the kicker for me was this statement:
The difference between saying “I used X and it sucked” and “I used X for Y and it didn’t work out because of Z” is the difference between becoming experienced and simply growing cynical. Be experienced, not cynical.
Nah, I want to to make the message clear.
Keeping parents happy or vendors who foist questionable software upon clueless customers does not interest me. I tolerate with difficulty those who want every child to get a gold star and an A for effort.
Yes, puppies. How lovable.
The puppy with the teeth probably got the most food. I quite like the author’s word choice. “Sucked” has a Miltonic touch. How better to convey a nuance that with “sucked.”
I wish there were a FURminator for some other modest problems in life.
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2015
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