The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.
Interpretation
Complex systems can be effectively created by combining simpler, functioning components.
This quote emphasizes the importance of starting with basic elements that are well-understood and effective, as a means to construct more elaborate systems. By focusing on creating simple systems first, we can ensure that each part works independently, which ultimately contributes to the reliability and efficiency of the overall complex system.
In practice
In a tech conference discussion on software engineering, someone might share this quote to emphasize modular programming.
This is actually a very important principle that science is learning about large systems like evolution and that futurists are learning about anticipating human society: just because a future scenario is plausible doesn't mean we can get there from here.
Humans are the reproductive organs of technology.
The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it.
I find that creative streak I think often leads in programmers to be good predictors of where culture as a whole is going to go. And that is where I think I've tried over the years to in some ways use my customers as a filter or a predictor of where technology as a whole is going to go. Or where the world as a whole is going to go.
Disruptive innovations create jobs, efficiency innovations destroy them.
The Internet was supposed to be the greatest tool of global communications and means of sharing knowledge in human history. And it is. But it has also become the most effective instrument of mass surveillance and potentially one of the greatest instruments of totalitarianism in the history of the world.
How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity - in short: what mathematicians call elegance - are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
I am not anti-technology; I am pro-conversation.
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