I find my problems to be my skills, just on the wrong planet. I master subjects through focus and persistance, and ignore everything else. My problem is I want to know. About, is not enough, I want answers to all my questions.
The world's reaction is I am gone, I am, but return with things that most do not want to know. The world gets by on a partial skill set. I am driven to learn more than I need to do anything. Going to the edge of knowledge, and looking out, is my favorite passtime. Most of the world just as strongly seeks the center of knowledge, where they feel comfortable.
Most try for a safe and secure life, a sure thing, they like the consistant and socially acceptable. A hundred years ago I might have been an explorer, going to places unknown. The world is known, but knowledge is expanding.
I read all of the patents in a class, a field of knowledge, marked, defined, and learn the work that went before. Many useful things came from the subject, and learning all that went before, I see it knowing of methods and materials that the prior inventors did not. It gives me ideas of what could be, of where we might be going, and some ideas I can not disprove, nor can the Patent Office.
Inventors are a subset of AS. They are about one out of five thousand, and the ones I have met are like me. Focus, persistance, excessive learning, are the common skills of the group.
The fool, who persists in his folly, soon becomes wise. It is an old saying, we have been around.
Only a bit over a hundred years ago, the people called NT here, spent their time plowing with a horse or mule. 99% of people were small farmers. The 1% who were bookish, given to learning, taught themselves to read, were sold into an apprenticeship, then they focused on learning one skill, becoming productive, for seven years. Then they could chose to work for other masters, for another seven years, then they had to create a Master Piece, to be judged by all of the leading Masters of the craft, that showed a complete understanding of the trade, and added to the development of the work. Then they were made a Master.
This small group of misfits developed all art and technology. Everyone else plowed, planted, harvested, and did it again next year. They developed a social order of group work, and depended on maintaining social connections with their neighbors.
The misfits developed the machines that ended the farming life, that had stayed unchanged for thousands of years, it brought the farm population into cities for factory jobs. They did not come as apprentices to learn, they were factory hands, a meat machine, a strong back, weak mind, doing the same repetitive machine operator jobs till they died. They no longer learned the ways of plants and animals, of the seasons, but came when the whistle blew. All they have of the old ways are religion, sports, and they cling to them.
They have no security, no farm, no people they will live and die with. All they can aspire to is a new car, a big house, good clothes, and living in debt servitude till they die. Some parts of the new era were good, people live longer, in good health. Some was tramatic, a loss of a way of life where they fit in.
The misfits are now in Redmond, Round Rock, Silicon Valley, making what they have obsolete. One person, with one thought, can make many thousands suddenly useless. When new ways come, old plants close, and without a network of friends, finding another job is hard.
Their stress, their ways, which we have a hard time with, were caused by us. We are still causing problems. Doctor Lab Pet will find a way to release the bond that holds water together. Suddenly there will be endless fuel, and most stocks will become worthless overnight. All people and companies that hold their capital in stocks will be instantly bankrupt.
We are gifted, but have no way of seeing the results of our actions. We are out to produce Ice 9. A chain reaction that released the bonds of water would burn the planet. The inventors of the Hydrogen Bomb considered it a possible result, starting a reaction in the oceans, there was only one way to tell, so they tested it, it came up heads, so we are still here.
03 Aug 2007, 9:10 am
