Essays
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- Programming Bottom-Up - Страница 1
- Lisp for Web-Based Applications - Страница 3
- Beating the Averages - Страница 6
- Java's Cover - Страница 12
- Being Popular - Страница 14
- Five Questions about Language Design - Страница 24
- The Roots of Lisp - Страница 28
- The Other Road Ahead - Страница 29
- What Made Lisp Different - Страница 44
- Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented - Страница 45
- Taste for Makers - Страница 46
- What Languages Fix - Страница 52
- Succinctness is Power - Страница 53
- Revenge of the Nerds - Страница 57
- A Plan for Spam - Страница 65
- Design and Research - Страница 72
- Better Bayesian Filtering - Страница 76
- Why Nerds are Unpopular - Страница 82
- The Hundred-Year Language - Страница 90
- If Lisp is So Great - Страница 97
- Hackers and Painters - Страница 98
- Filters that Fight Back - Страница 105
- What You Can't Say - Страница 107
- The Word "Hacker" - Страница 114
- The Python Paradox - Страница 117
- Great Hackers - Страница 118
- The Age of the Essay - Страница 125
- What the Bubble Got Right - Страница 131
- Bradley's Ghost - Страница 136
- Made in USA - Страница 137
- What You'll Wish You'd Known - Страница 140
- How to Start a Startup - Страница 147
- A Unified Theory of VC Suckagepad - Страница 159
- Undergraduation - Страница 161
- Writing, Briefly - Страница 166
- Return of the Mac - Страница 167
- Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas - Страница 169
- The Submarine - Страница 173
- Hiring is Obsolete - Страница 177
- What Business Can Learn from Open Source - Страница 183
- After the Ladder - Страница 189
- Inequality and Risk - Страница 190
- What I Did this Summer - Страница 194
- Ideas for Startups - Страница 198
- The Venture Capital Squeeze - Страница 203
- How to Fund a Startup - Страница 205
- Web 2.0 - Страница 217
- How to Make Wealth - Страница 222
- Good and Bad Procrastination - Страница 233
- How to Do What You Love - Страница 236
- Are Software Patents Evil? - Страница 242
- The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn - Страница 248
- How to Be Silicon Valley - Страница 255
- Why Startups Condense in America - Страница 260
- The Power of the Marginal - Страница 267
- The Island Test - Страница 275
- Copy What You Like - Страница 276
- How to Present to Investors - Страница 278
- A Student's Guide to Startups - Страница 282
- The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups - Страница 290
- Mind the Gap - Страница 297
- How Art Can Be Good - Страница 305
- Learning from Founders - Страница 310
- Is It Worth Being Wise? - Страница 311
- Why to Not Not Start a Startup - Страница 316
- Microsoft is Dead - Страница 324
- Two Kinds of Judgement - Страница 326
- The Hacker's Guide to Investors - Страница 327
- An Alternative Theory of Unions - Страница 336
- The Equity Equation - Страница 337
- Stuff - Страница 339
- Holding a Program in One's Head - Страница 341
- How Not to Die - Страница 344
- News from the Front - Страница 347
- How to Do Philosophy - Страница 350
- The Future of Web Startups - Страница 357
- Why to Move to a Startup Hub - Страница 362
- Six Principles for Making New Things - Страница 364
- Trolls - Страница 366
- A New Venture Animal - Страница 368
- You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss - Страница 371
When Milton was going to visit Italy in the 1630s, Sir Henry Wootton, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be "i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto." Closed thoughts and an open face. Smile at everyone, and don't tell them what you're thinking. This was wise advice. Milton was an argumentative fellow, and the Inquisition was a bit restive at that time. But I think the difference between Milton's situation and ours is only a matter of degree. Every era has its heresies, and if you don't get imprisoned for them you will at least get in enough trouble that it becomes a complete distraction.
I admit it seems cowardly to keep quiet. When I read about the harassment to which the Scientologists subject their critics [12], or that pro-Israel groups are "compiling dossiers" on those who speak out against Israeli human rights abuses [13], or about people being sued for violating the DMCA [14], part of me wants to say, "All right, you bastards, bring it on." The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. [15]
The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is that you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing friends. The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also the most interesting to know.
Viso Sciolto?I don't think we need the viso sciolto so much as the pensieri stretti. Perhaps the best policy is to make it plain that you don't agree with whatever zealotry is current in your time, but not to be too specific about what you disagree with. Zealots will try to draw you out, but you don't have to answer them. If they try to force you to treat a question on their terms by asking "are you with us or against us?" you can always just answer "neither".
Better still, answer "I haven't decided." That's what Larry Summers did when a group tried to put him in this position. Explaining himself later, he said "I don't do litmus tests." [16] A lot of the questions people get hot about are actually quite complicated. There is no prize for getting the answer quickly.
If the anti-yellowists seem to be getting out of hand and you want to fight back, there are ways to do it without getting yourself accused of being a yellowist. Like skirmishers in an ancient army, you want to avoid directly engaging the main body of the enemy's troops. Better to harass them with arrows from a distance.
One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction. If you argue against censorship in general, you can avoid being accused of whatever heresy is contained in the book or film that someone is trying to censor. You can attack labels with meta-labels: labels that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. The spread of the term "political correctness" meant the beginning of the end of political correctness, because it enabled one to attack the phenomenon as a whole without being accused of any of the specific heresies it sought to suppress.
Another way to counterattack is with metaphor. Arthur Miller undermined the House Un-American Activities Committee by writing a play, "The Crucible," about the Salem witch trials. He never referred directly to the committee and so gave them no way to reply. What could HUAC do, defend the Salem witch trials? And yet Miller's metaphor stuck so well that to this day the activities of the committee are often described as a "witch-hunt."
Best of all, probably, is humor. Zealots, whatever their cause, invariably lack a sense of humor. They can't reply in kind to jokes. They're as unhappy on the territory of humor as a mounted knight on a skating rink. Victorian prudishness, for example, seems to have been defeated mainly by treating it as a joke. Likewise its reincarnation as political correctness. "I am glad that I managed to write 'The Crucible,'" Arthur Miller wrote, "but looking back I have often wished I'd had the temperament to do an absurd comedy, which is what the situation deserved." [17]
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