Archive for May 3, 2010

Thoughts and thoughts on thoughts

First, the new Season of Doctor Who is a gigantic letdown.  The female companion came on to the Doctor.  ARGH!  It’s completely unnecessary.  She’s getting married the day after she arrives back home but she’s so infatuated by this mysterious Doctor that she runs off in the middle of the night and forgets everything.  Also, she is apparently another integral part of Spacetime and will either cause or prevent the end of time.  Garbage.

Moving on, somewhat…

I’ve started reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again.  I made it through the first part and things are really picking up.  I don’t want to spend time going into the book so go read it, it’s a good one.  This guy travels on a motorcycle and ponders the world’s problems.

He is much like the Doctor.  They have the issues of the world around them in their minds and they ponder the solutions.  They ponder the entirety of the universe and come out with two different results.  Since they are fictional characters, they are able to gain some insight from the whole of creation.  The Doctor mentions this but only in reaction to the destruction of a mind (sorry, little spoiler there).  The main character of ZAMM (Zombies Ate My Mothers?) goes into this a little more and talks about information overload.

Each day we are subjected to a fantastic amount of information and our minds have to come up with ways of coping.  Some can’t.  My question is: can we tweak the filter?  Can we sift through the outrageous amounts of information and come up with solutions we never considered before?  Is that why pair programming is better?  If the same minds encounter the same massive amounts of information do they interpret and recall different parts?

Maybe I’ll go back to my reading.  Happy break between Spring and Summer I, Northeastern.

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