The first posts on this site included a discourse on whether Albert Einstein would blog, or even use a computer. Much of his success was due to simplicity, both in thought and in lifestyle. If he could get by without something, no matter how essential others might consider this thing to be, he would do without it. Although he often was so fixated that he’d forget to eat or to put on clothes if summoned to eat, that was not why he went without socks: His feet were protected by shoes making socks less than crucial, so why clutter his life with such a luxury! He would not own a computer and certainly wouldn’t blog unless there was no other way to get his work done.
A few months ago the computer used for blogging to this site went down, along with its backup drive, taking the links, codes and passwords with it, so the question has resurfaced. Einstein wouldn’t have committed to the extraneous work of posting in the first place, much less have had the requisite equipment to go blogging because such complicated technology is bound to eat up time when things go right, not even to mention when things go wrong. So if I take the Professor’s advice I’d quit now. Of course I already borrowed his habit of not being swayed by anyone else’s opinion when I have confidence in my own, so with the laptop temporarily serving as the main computer, and the task of re-acquiring the links and the codes behind me, away we go.
In the interest of total disclosure I should point out that I have been less than attentive to this blog for a bit longer than I have been “beyond access.” For a good part of this past year my time has been consumed by work on my Einstein project (Frankeinstein Presents: “Thought Experiments” WWW.frankeinstein.org ) Leading up to a taping of a demo piece we faced a multitude of complications. Half of them were people related, half of them were technical difficulties. Although Albert always had a staff to allow him the freedom to concentrate on his work, he kept it small. The more people involved, no matter how well chosen, the more complications. To summarize a long story, despite half a year of preparation, including multiple series of sets of rehearsals, there were so many forced changes that several performers did not even meet until the actual filming. As far as the technical difficulties, Einstein would certainly laugh at a show about his works stalled by such complications. So of course the main computer handling everything died, along with it’s backup drive, in one fantastic episode days before the taping.
Experts will tell you that when bringing a computer back to life via an external backup drive that the backup is safe; blanked hard drives don’t have viruses and things aren’t traveling in that direction anyway. The thing is, when a computer is damaged just the right way it can, at least according to my recent empirical evidence, do strange things, no matter how many times it’s guts have been erased and reformatted. Face it, we have made such complicated systems that we, the designers, are unaware of the depths of the possibilities of what our systems can do and what can go wrong. It is all the more amazing that we have managed to acquire the small bit of understanding of the workings of the universe whose complications came without an owner’s manual. As The Professor said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”
Real scientists don’t believe in curses, so when a fantastic series of coincidences ruins everything time and time again, instead of whining about one’s fate and how “they’re” out to get you, it’s best to be able to step back and laugh. The rules of entropy assure us that everything that can be influenced by sheer chance will tend to go wrong, so every project is likely to be a bumpy ride. Fortunately, Relativity guarantees that every perspective is equally valid, so at least you are always justified when taking a step back to laugh at your own predicament. If anything you are more correct than those who figure the knee-jerk reactions of anger, sadness, resentment and disillusionment are the way to go.
Still, during this fantastic series of “things to laugh at” I sat back several times with thoughts of joining Albert in his banishment of complications. Perhaps I could pick him up (should mention that of course several unrelated but humorously timed car problems added to the fun) and take a road trip to visit Thoreau. We’ll hash out the rest of this idea and finish blogging later… Hmmm, do you think they have web access from Walden’s Pond?
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