Kevin Vogelsang

To add a little more clarity to what complexity is:  complexity is not “complicatedness.”

Complexity is intricate, but it is not convoluted.

-Kevin
3.6.2010

Both are important.  They are the two sides of elegance.

We tend to push simplicity: “all things should be as simple as they can be.”  And this is probably best.  It’s harder to mess up simple things.  Think about architecture.  It’s hard to go wrong with columns and arches and domes (assuming they are constructed properly).  But, ultimately, it’s about elegance, not simplicity.

Very few people are skilled enough in an art to highlight complexity.  But, it exists and it’s part of the world.

It’s also beautiful.

-Kevin
3.5.2010

All people must have or find a “sphere of influence.”

Our sphere of influence is a realm in which we are a mover, a high impact player, the X factor.  Within our sphere of influence, we matter…a lot.

This sphere may be large or small.  It may be easy or hard to find.  It could be a role within our community.   It could be within our family. It could be on a sports team.  It could be within lines of code.  It could be our garden.  It could be the entire world.

The most important thing is that we find it.  We need to find it for ourselves and for everyone else.  Our energy needs to be directed somewhere where it matters.

-Kevin
2.2.2010

As the hardware for reading ebooks improves, eBooks will continue to be adopted. 

But, there’s one thing that eBooks don’t do: they don’t visibly sit on a shelf.

Books aren’t just for reading.  They express something about us.  A book on our shelf represents something we see (or want to see) in ourselves.

They’re also like trophies.  You can’t walk into my house and see all the eBooks I’ve conquered.  You can’t appreciate the grandeur of an eBook library.

eBooks are much more cost effective way of publishing and distributing content.  But, I still think people will continue to buy physical books for a long time.  But, they’ll likely become more of a luxury good.

Today, Apple announced it’s new tablet device–the iPad. They also announced iBooks, the iPad’s application/platform for ebooks.  Interestingly enough, Apple was smart enough to try and replicate the feeling of a book sitting on a shelf.  The idea of putting eBooks on a shelf is much more provocative than adding them to a list of text.

-Kevin
1.27.2009

To be a good writer, it’s good to think about writing.  And to think clearly, it’s good to write.  This works so well that I often write just to figure things out. (I’m partially doing that now.)

Skimming is the art of consuming text on the web, and not because we have so much we want to get to, but because we have so much to avoid; most writing is muck and fluff.

Writing is a great thing.  Everyone should do it.  Consequently, everyone should think about what makes good writing.

A few thoughts on good writing to remember:

A writer is a diamond cutter.  The writer’s job is to slice away meaningless and distracting material, and leaves behind hard-edged, crystalline thought. This doesn’t mean writing must be plain, it does mean you’ll want to look at it.

Good writing delivers insight.  (But what if the writer’s only goal is to convey information?  With lack of insight, they won’t deliver the right information.)

Good writing is conversational.

Good writing has a bit of a bite to it.  It’s so evocative that it stings.

Good writing should be clear, in contradistinction to simple.  Indeed, most of the time writing should be simple, easy to understand, so the reader can glide along, propelled by the words.  The reader needs to feel they’re going somewhere.  However, the writer should also inject the right dose of complexity: too much and the reader stumbles and eventually comes to a halt and their mind stagnates, too little and the reader leaves without sensation. “I could’ve thought of that”, “interesting, but trivial,”they say to themselves.  They’ll quickly move on and lose the chance to contemplate something important.

A swift jab of complexity reminds the reader that the thought possesses complexity and is truly awe-inspiring; the reader must take a moment to wrap their mind around it.  Beautiful things possess both elegant simplicity and complexity.  Clarity requires we illuminate each, or we lose the full meaning.

One last thought: grammar is only a set of rules meant to enhance clarity. Nothing more.

-Kevin
1.5.2010

I’m working on a book right now.  It’s fairly short, but it’s taking much longer than I had anticipated. Most of the content is there, but as usual, the devil is in the details.  Good writing is crisp, clear, and compelling;  there’s always something to tighten up and improve.    (It’s currently over 11,000 words.  No wonder longer works take years to write.)

But the Truth is, any work of art, any thing we create , is very personal–it represents us.  And it’s never perfect, and we could spend an infinite amount of time on it.  I didn’t fully realize this until my first startup expedition.

For this reason, Ayn Rand, as well as other authors, considered using a pseudonym for her books.  She knew it would always have shortcomings.  She wrote some of the most epic novels of the century.

The strategy most product-related artists take is to push the work out the door as soon as possible and fix it later.  This strategy puts pressure on the artist to improve it as soon as possible (you don’t want something subpar out there) and allows you to start getting thoughts and feedback to improve (or to learn from in your next work.)

Anyone out there that makes stuff have any thoughts on getting a creation out the door?  or deciding when it’s finished?

-Kevin
12.29.2009

Imitation is often frowned upon.  We seem to equate imitation to being unoriginal.  This is an immature frame of thought–imitation is a vital tool.

We study the masters of a craft to learn what they know.  By making use of actions/techniques/strategies/behaviors that resemble another’s, we aren’t being unoriginal, we’re making use of a Truth they’ve already discovered. And so long as we do this in a way that adds value, we should aim to imitate the masters: we should stand on the shoulders of giants.

This is progress.  Imitation is a part of learning and is often a precursor to innovation.

By masters I don’t mean only dead men you’ll find  in history books, these are masters that happen to be documented.  A master could be anyone that knows more about something than anyone. And with billions of skills and nuances to be mastered, we encounter masters every day.

Reaching for perfection is a perpetual process; we can only asymptotically approach an ideal.

Reaching for progress is also an evolutionary process.

With this in mind, if you’re really good at something, we should find shards of others skilled in the art–traces of past progress that persist, that is, until the next paradigm is reached.

-Kevin
12.27.09

To build something awesome, you absolutely need 1) time and 2) community.

I find people are compelled to say that passion, resources, opportunity are the essentials.  These are all important, and you or I could probably make a great case for them.  But, I’m not sure they’re absolutes.

I do know you need time.  Time is the most important thing we have.  Few things affect us as much as time.

Time doesn’t necessarily mean only “the limited quantity of time that we have.”  Time also includes “timing.”

The necessity of community is a little less obvious.  Richard Hamming hits the nail on the head:

I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don’t quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. –Richard Hamming, Talk at Belcore, 1986

If you’ve ever worked on a really hard problem, particularly one that’s never been solved, you’ll probably understand.  Are you on the right track?  Is it working?  Does it matter at all?    If you’re working in a bubble,  you lose sight of the answers to these questions.

-Kevin
11.10.09

(You can follow me on Twitter @KevinVogelsang)

In recent months, I’ve begun to spend more time thinking about and studying art and design. I don’t have a lot of time to do so, but it’s now actively on my mind.

When you begin to attempt to reconstruct the world, whether it be a   concrete or more abstract interpretation, you begin to look more closely.  You gain a heightened perception of the world’s form and function; you see the world as it actually is.

And whether you’re constructing a portrait or a caricature, the devil is in the details, and to see those details clearly, you need to look objectively.

You could say the brain is constructed to be biased. We walk around carrying models in our head.  We walk past a tree, and we generalize its form down to the essentials of a tree.  Never mind the fact that it’s likely one of a kind.  (We do the same for nearly all things in the world.)

And thank goodness that most people can do this to a minimal degree.  The world does need people who can “get on with it”, avoid being bogged down, and keep the machine running.  But when you need to build, reconstruct, or repair the machine, you need people enamored with all its subtle complexities.

And from this perspective, artists and engineers aren’t so different.  They’ve simply delved into the world with a different set of tools and mastered their realm.

And upon writing this, I’ve discovered two things:

First, if you want to build the machine, find the subtle complexities you’re enamored with, not the great goals you wish to accomplish.

And second, be wary of the models you hold in your head.

Kevin
10.10.2009