Please Build More Silly Things

Please Build More Silly Things请多做些愚蠢的事情

Hacking on fun things with curious co-conspirators is a superpower 与好奇的同谋者一起黑进有趣的东西是一种超能力

Lightbulb ideas from young people tend to fall into one of three categories: hacks, projects, and startups. Ideas can start in a bucket, and end up in another as time passes. Let’s walk through them in reverse order. I should also note, that when I refer to “build” I generally mean making something with code/engineering, but I think a lot of the thoughts here can extrapolate to other definitions. 来自年轻人的灯泡想法往往分为三类之一：hacks黑客，projects项目，and startups创业. 想法可以从一个桶开始，随着时间的推移，在另一个桶中结束。 让我们以相反的顺序来浏览它们。 我还应该注意到，当我提到“构建”时，我通常指的是用代码/工程来做一些事情，但我认为这里的很多想法可以推断到其他定义。

Startups are thesis-driven ideas. Some form of the future necessitates your idea, and you are convinced that you are the perfect person to lead the way. You can actively look for these ideas by immersing yourself among bright people, or it can fall into your lap, often after years of tossing and turning between less fruitful ones. 创业是论文驱动的想法。 未来的某种形式需要你的想法，你确信你是领导这条道路的完美人选。 你可以通过沉浸在聪明的人中间来积极地寻找这些想法，或者站在巨人的肩膀上，通常是在多年的折腾和不那么富有成效的想法之间。

Projects are ideas with a means to an end. Generally, they’re not very unique, but are great tools for learning. Projects look fantastic on a resume due to their technical challenge, but can be uninspiring. You can develop real world skills by working on projects. 项目是一种想法，有达到目的的手段。 一般来说，它们不是很独特，但却是很好的学习工具。 项目在简历上看起来很棒，因为它们具有技术挑战性，但可能没有启发性。 你可以通过项目工作来培养真实的世界的技能。

Finally, my favorite: hacks. Hacks can be weird (like really weird), random, clunky, and unpolished. But most of all, they are explorative. You learn how to harness new technologies and craft joy when hacking. It’s hard to describe hacks precisely, but everyone has a good intuition for its ingredients. Hacking is play. Hacking is for fun and curiosity. 最后，我的最爱：黑客黑客可以是怪异的，随机的，笨拙的，未经修饰的。 但最重要的是，它们是探索性的。 你学习如何利用新技术和工艺的乐趣时，黑客。 很难准确地描述黑客行为，但每个人都有一个很好的直觉，它的成分。 黑客就是游戏。 黑客是为了乐趣和好奇心。 Your business books and podcasts can only get you so far. You have to have some fun hacking as well! 你的商业书籍和播客只能让你走到这一步。你也要有一些乐趣黑客！

Chris Dixon wrote about how hacks like Bitcoin, NoSQL databases, and many others found their way into the minds of playful technologists before breaking into the mainstream. 克里斯·迪克森（Chris Dixon）写过比特币、NoSQL数据库等黑客是如何在进入主流之前进入有趣的技术人员的头脑的。

Today, the tech hobbies with momentum include: math-based currencies like Bitcoin, new software development tools like NoSQL databases, the internet of things, 3D printing, touch-free human/computer interfaces, and “artisanal” hardware like the kind you find on Kickstarter.
今天，有动力的技术爱好包括：基于数学的货币，如比特币，新的软件开发工具，如NoSQL数据库，物联网，3D打印，非接触式人机界面，以及像你在Kickstarter上找到的那种“手工”硬件。

It’s a good bet these present-day hobbies will seed future industries. What the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.
很有可能，这些当今的爱好将为未来的产业埋下种子。最聪明的人在周末做的事情，是其他人在十年内，每周需要做的事情。

From Chris Dixon (in 2013) Chris狄克逊（2013）

It’s important to make the distinction between startups, projects, and hacks because I often see a blurring of the buckets at school. Nearly everything students build either fall in the category of project or hack, and very rarely startup. But the skills and intuitions gathered from projects and hacks, respectively, can provide way for great startup ideas. 区分初创公司、项目和黑客很重要，因为我经常在学校看到这些桶的模糊不清。 几乎所有学生建立的东西都属于项目或黑客的范畴，很少启动。 但是，从项目和黑客中分别收集的技能和直觉可以为伟大的创业想法提供途径。

From my (very) limited perspective on the world, I believe that in order to open the most exclusive doors and access the most elusive opportunities, you need to be hacking. 从我对世界（非常）有限的视角来看，我相信，为了打开最排外的大门，获得最难以捉摸的机会，你需要成为黑客。 Learn the Constraints, Win the Game 了解约束条件，赢得比赛 Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels | Meer You can only figure out the constraints of a system if you spend some time with it. 你只有花些时间才能弄清楚一个系统的限制。

By spending time hacking (i.e. playing around for the sake of playing around), you learn what is possible and what isn’t possible. The constraints of a new technology become highly apparent. You can develop an understanding of what people will be able to do in the next [3 months/1 year/5 years] only if you can understand what people can do now. 通过花时间黑客（即为了玩而玩），你了解了什么是可能的，什么是不可能的。 新技术的局限性变得非常明显。 只有当你能理解人们现在能做什么的时候，你才能理解人们在未来[3个月/1年/5年]能做什么。

From an instructive perspective, hacks require you to be brutally honest to yourself about what you know and what you don’t know. They also build taste. You learn what you like spending time on and what you hate with little downside. 从一个有教育意义的角度来看，黑客要求你对自己诚实地说出你知道什么和不知道什么。 他们也创造了品味。 你会了解到你喜欢花时间做什么，讨厌什么，而且几乎没有什么坏处。

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Hacks are also high convexity. That is, the loss is always bounded (often just time) but the potential gains are uncapped. Even if you drain a lot of time into a hack, you will still learn a ton. 黑客也是高收益的。 也就是说，损失总是有界的（通常只是时间），但潜在的收益是无限的。 即使你花了很多时间在黑客上，你仍然会学到很多东西。 From “Collect as many lottery tickets as you can” by Ada Yeo. 从“收集尽可能多的彩票，你可以”由阿达杨。

Some of the most impressive startups started off as hacks. Here’s an example. 一些最令人印象深刻的创业公司都是从黑客开始的。举个例子

Evan Wallace, an undergrad at Brown, was curious about WebGL, a new powerful graphics framework for the browser, and built a sphere in a pool of water. At the time, this doesn’t seem exciting at all, but this was the spark that lit the path that Evan and his soon-to-become cofounder Dylan Field found themselves on before building the recently acquired Figma. Something as simple and playful as “WebGL Water” gave Evan and Dylan the intuition that complex graphics in the browser were not far from reality.A sphere in a pool of water. Pretty crazy this was the start of a $20b company : 布朗大学的本科生埃文·华莱士（Evan Wallace）对WebGL（一种新的强大的浏览器图形框架）感到好奇，并在水池中建造了一个球体。当时，这似乎并不令人兴奋，但这是Evan和他即将成为联合创始人的Dylan Field在建立最近收购的Figma之前发现自己的道路的火花。像“WebGL Water”这样简单好玩的东西让Evan和Dylan直觉地认为，浏览器中的复杂图形离现实不远了。 一池水中的球体。这是一家200亿美元公司的开始，这太疯狂了：）

It’s not just startups. Many technological fields were birthed by hacks. 不仅仅是创业公司。许多技术领域都是由黑客创造的。

For no other reason than fun, Claude Shannon and Ed Thorp wanted to build a hack that could help them win at roulette. It ended up becoming the first wearable electronic device. 克劳德·香农（Claude Shannon）和埃德·索普（艾德Thorp）想建立一个可以帮助他们在轮盘赌中获胜的黑客。它最终成为第一个可穿戴电子设备。 Afflictor.com · “The First Wearable Computer Was Conceived In 1955 To Predict Roulette” Shannon in particular spent a lot of time hacking. “In 1951 Claude Shannon made Theseus, a maze-solving mouse that used a bank of relays for its brain. It was a fairly large device with X-Y motors, 90 relays, reed switches and lots of metal.” (source) 香农尤其花了大量时间进行黑客攻击。1951年，克劳德·香农（Claude Shannon）制造了一种解决迷宫的老鼠Theseus，它的大脑使用了一组继电器。这是一个相当大的设备，有X-Y电机、90个继电器、簧片开关和大量金属。”（资料来源）

Lincoln, who had a keen interest in technology and remains the only American president with a patent, spent more of his presidency in the War Department’s telegraph office than anywhere else outside of the White House…
林肯对技术有着浓厚的兴趣，并且仍然是唯一一位拥有专利的美国总统，他在战争部电报局度过的总统任期比白宫以外的任何地方都要长。

[…]

Lincoln sent barely more than one telegram a month in the first year of his presidency, but that changed as he grew increasingly frustrated with the war’s plodding progress. He wielded the nascent technology to take greater control of the war effort after sending a flurry of telegrams on May 24, 1862, that directed his generals to move at once against the forces of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
林肯在他总统任期的第一年，每月只发一封电报，但随着他对战争的缓慢进展越来越感到沮丧，情况发生了变化。1862年5月24日，他发出了一系列电报，指示他的将军们立即行动，反对邦联将军托马斯·“石墙”·杰克逊的部队。

From How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Help Win the Civil War
亚伯拉罕·林肯如何使用电报帮助赢得内战 

Lincoln might have been one of only a few “hacker” presidents. His curious mindset about a new technology fundamentally altered communication during the Civil War. He had to first play with the telegraph before he could use it effectively. 林肯可能是为数不多的“黑客”总统之一。他对新技术的好奇心态从根本上改变了内战期间的通信。他必须先摆弄电报，然后才能有效地使用它。

Hacks have produced new industries, massive companies, and victories in war. 黑客创造了新的行业、大公司和战争的胜利。

Curiosity and Co-conspirators 好奇心和同谋

So, how do you get started with hacking? Well, you first need outlandish, creative ideas that can be built with existing technology. 那么，你是如何开始黑客的呢？ 首先，你需要一些稀奇古怪的、有创意的想法，这些想法可以用现有的技术来构建。

To come with ideas, you need to initially work on projects. Learn a few things from people who do it well and within no time, you will be wondering “hmmm, what if I tried this” or “aha! this could be interesting.” 要想有想法，你首先需要做一些项目。 从那些做得很好的人那里学到一些东西，很快，你就会想“嗯，如果我试试这个会怎么样”或者“啊哈！”这可能会很有趣。”

The importance here is to follow one’s own nose rather than externally provided structure. Structure is limiting. It’s very unlikely that school or classes alone will get you to build. You need to run experiments driven by curiosity in order to truly understand something in depth. 这里的重要性是跟随自己的鼻子，而不是外部提供的结构。 结构是有限的。 光靠学校或班级是不太可能让你去建造的。 你需要在好奇心的驱使下进行实验，才能真正深入地理解一些东西。

Once you have some base-level skills, you need to find likeminded peers. 一旦你掌握了一些基本技能，你就需要找到志同道合的同伴。

You can’t grok the future from the outside. You have to be a part of the in-group. You need to be building and playing with others who are equally curious about what the future holds. This involves taking risks and messing with technology for no other reason than a desire to push it to its limit. 你不可能从外面看到未来。 你必须成为团体的一部分。 你需要和其他同样对未来充满好奇的人一起建设和玩耍。 这涉及到冒险和搞乱技术，没有其他原因，只是希望把它推到极限。

There’s a captivating flywheel effect here. As you hack more, more hackers will find you and you will generate more ideas. You want to get to the point where you have more ideas than time to build. 这里有一个迷人的飞轮效应。 当你破解的次数越多，就会有更多的黑客找到你，你也会产生更多的想法。 你想达到这样一个地步，你有更多的想法比时间来建立。

It’s hard to believe that someone who isn’t a conscious hacker will ever have a successful endeavor in a creative field. There needs to be a graveyard of past hacks. There seems to be a period of a “drunk man’s walk” moving between hacks and ideas before an ultimate breakthrough. You need a little bit of gradient descent to get to the minima — you can’t just cross your fingers and teleport there. 很难相信一个不是有意识的黑客的人会在创造性领域取得奋进。 需要有一个过去黑客的墓地。 在最终取得突破之前，似乎有一段时间是在黑客和想法之间徘徊的“醉汉漫步”。 你需要一点梯度下降才能到达最小值–你不能只是交叉手指然后瞬移到那里。 You can call yourself a “hacker” or “builder” or “entrepreneur” but none of these things matter if you don’t leave behind a trail of things you’ve done. 你可以称自己为“黑客”、“建设者”或“企业家”，但如果你不留下你做过的事情的痕迹，这些都不重要。

Hacks demonstrate your ability to tinker, contribute to the broader exploration of a new technology, and maintain a pulse on forthcoming trends. 黑客展示了你的修补能力，为新技术的更广泛探索做出贡献，并保持对即将到来的趋势的脉搏。

Hacking is like getting a Willy Wonka golden ticket, granting access to a community of individuals who are shaping the future. Investigating with small, unconventional projects can demonstrate your curiosity and willingness to understand how technology can be integrated into society. As history suggests, the future will be built on top of today’s silly hacks. 黑客就像是获得了一张威利·旺卡的金票，可以进入一个由塑造未来的个人组成的社区。 通过小型的非常规项目进行调查可以展示您的好奇心和意愿，以了解技术如何融入社会。 正如历史所表明的那样，未来将建立在今天愚蠢的黑客之上。 Subscribe to Subscribe to公共实验Public Experiments

By Varun · Launched 8 months ago 由Varun ·8个月前推出 · Launched 8 months ago

Marginalia on science, engineering, and culture. 关于科学、工程和文化的旁注。

SuRen 7.4.2023