Not sure how that's easier than: Turn computer (which boots close to instantly), print "hello world".
It is certainly true that there are more informational resources available, but honestly, there was plenty of good info available at most decent libraries, and the manuals that came with computers were typically troves of information back in the 8-bit days.
Yeah, people forget (or just never experienced) how easy it was to learn something like Delphi pre-Internet: the software box had good manuals and you just hit F1 for context-sensitive help that was actually useful.
computers don't need to boot "close to instantly" because nobody ever turns them off now. The "open browser" step in the previous comment is probably a noop because who even closes their browsers?
And it's much, much rarer but equally as important corollary: UTFM (Use TFM). UTFM means: when you're designing a system, adhere your design so f**ing tightly to standard usage. RTFM/UTFM with standard tooling gets you so, so far to building high-quality software.
Edit: I actually just made up (as far as I know) UTFM, but I really wish it were a thing.
On the flip side, it wouldn't be entirely surprising if mathematical constructs that we have thought of are in fact very good models of fundamental reality. We should remember that, after all, nothing exists outside of fundamental reality, and if certain basic patterns can be encoded such that the encoding is both high-fidelity and simple, that won't be shocking. It might be awe-inspiring, but not really surprising.
Too close, in my opinion. If I said "Communication is a part of physics", it would be clear that I don't mean "all of communication is a subset of physics" and that I do mean "doing physics involves communicating your findings". I think this is the author's intention.
Edit: Actually, it does seem like the author claims mathematics is a proper subset of physics.
> iMessage combines text messages and its own messaging system in a more-or-less opaque way to the end user
I don't really know what to say about it, but I just wanted to point out how we use both "opaque" and "transparent" in the way the author uses "opaque" here. I know this isn't unique (i.e. "I'm up for X" or "I'm down for X") but this particular instance is, for me and by far, the most confusing.
There's no modern Lapham because we don't "need" (quotes because I actually think we have a big problem here) one anymore. Lapham's role was as a representative of the learned readership at the institution. These days, we're our own representatives. It is quite trivial for me to curate a list of extremely interesting individuals who publish writing or podcasts or lectures or whatever.
Now, the reason I quoted "need" above, what I think is a huge problem with the world today, is that by democratizing production we've done the opposite with consumption. It's super difficult to access high-quality information these days unless you're already fairly well educated and have the tools to filter the noise. I don't really know what to do about this.
I agree with the author about the potential of audio interfaces + some simple additional inputs + integration with certain apps.
For me personally there is a suite of tools involving audio books and note taking that would change my life: A remote with a few physical buttons to rewind, switch to record-mode, skip sections. Speech to text with full text search. Voice recordings tied to what I’m listening to. Basically, I want to be able to work through a difficult audiobook while walking around.
It’s even easier than that though.
Open chrome, type “how to write computer programs” and go from there.