7 Billion Friends

Bruce Sterling On Atemporal Process

Bruce Sterling’s keynote at the Transmediale conference caught my ear as regards work process and problem solving now that we’re all in Internet Land. He compares the late great scientist Richard Feynman’s straight forward problem solving process to how his problem solving process might work today. This hit home as a pretty clear articulation of my own work process (the atemporal part), so chalk this up under work notes.

How the linear Richard Feynman worked:

step #1: write down the problem

step #2: think really hard

step #3: write down the solution

How the atemporal Richard Feynman of today works:

step #1: write problem in a search engine, see if someone else has solved it already

step #2: write problem in my blog, study the commentary, cross-link to other guys

step #3: write my problem in twitter in 140 characters, see if they can get it that small, see if it gets retweeted

step #4: open source the problem, supply some instructables that get me as far as i’ve been able to get, see if the community takes it any farther

step #5: start a ning social network about my problem, name the network after my problem, see if anybody accumulates around my problem

step #6: make a video of my problem, youtube my video, see if it spreads virally, see if any media convergence accumulates around my problem

step #7: create a design fiction that pretends that my problem has already been solved, create some gadget or application or product that has some relevance to my problem and see if anybody builds it

step #8: accacerbate or intensify my problem with a work of interventionist tactical media

step #9: find some kind of pretty illustrations from the flickr looking into the past photo pool

the old feynman would naturally object. you have not solved the problem, you have not advanced scientific knowledge, there is no progress in this, you didn’t get to step three solving the problem. the atemporal feynman would respond: you know it’s worse than that, i haven’t even done step one of defining the problem and writing it down, but i’ve done a lot of work about its meaning and its value and its social framing combined with some database mining and some collaborative filtering which is far beyond you and your pencil.

That last part brings to mind Marcel Duchamp: “There is no solution because there is no problem.”

For my part I like me my Feynmans:

and I like me my Duchamps:

And I have an atemporal faith that the rest will sort itself out.