Saturday, 25 February 2017
Machine muscle memory.
Inefficient innovation gives an efficient system its muscle memory.
There is poetry to this asymmetry. When I twist my wrist, my Apple Watch tells me the time. Does it think? No, it doesn’t think. Does it make an effort? No, it is effortless. Does it stress? Is it urgently racing against a deadline? No, it just moves. Does it struggle to coordinate with a server? Are electricity, hardware and software paralyzed as they route their paths? No, it just dances.
System is efficient, but on the other side, what agony goes into this birth? How much effort? How much thought? How many deadlines? How much planning? How much engineering, design? How many resources? What economic titans must do battle for this prize?
This is machine-metaphor. But humans began this story. From times of old, ancients practiced doing by not doing, effortless motion, no mind. Masters would practice until every intricacy of their craft had become utterly internalized, intuitive, graceful, muscle memory. And we still practice. Does an Olympic gymnast think while flying through the air, twisting, inverting, flipping, landing? Not any more. In that moment, mastery has turned gymnastics into a system of stunning efficiency, and the system has taken over.
