Day 1: Ramble

Writing, like everything else, is a skill that is honed. It is not something that we are born with, although of course, our genetic composition might play a role in determining your starting point, i.e., how well you may be able to write when you kick off, and your endpoint, i.e., how good you may be able to get at it. Are there limits to any of this? Probably not, but the curve definitely is logarithmic, so your progress will plateau at some point.

My problem I guess has always been this need to have everything happen in one fell swoop. To give you a better understanding of it, here’s an example: A while ago, I wanted to build an app. And I’d never built one. I’d never used the tools, the coding languages, none of it. But when I sat down to create it, I wanted it to be DONE by the next morning. And it wasn’t this tiny, single or dual-screen app. Nor was there even a proper design to start with.

Once I sat down and started learning how this particular language worked, i.e., Kotlin, and how to use Android Studio, I figured it was gonna be done like, that, in the blink of an eye. But no. Just like websites, apps, especially native apps, need patience. Every single spec is written in code. And to even make a dot appear on your screen, you need to write more than a couple of words.

This just seemed like madness to me. How on earth is it that we are the “most intelligent” species on earth, and THIS is how we make software? An app? A website? Any of it!

So, yeah, this was very disheartening to me at that point. Because I always thought, “we have come so far with technology, with science and its practical applications”, I just figured everything would be better, the GUI, the efficacy itself. I thought about how a movie or a photo is edited, how it’s all in tiny pixels, and even that is just tiny enough for us to get a comprehensive view with no apparent disturbances, i.e., just enough to be of “high definition” for what is visible to the naked eye.

But in the weeks that followed, something weird happened. I started to notice that every single thing in the world, is an accumulation of tiny, tiny steps. From the way we communicate with each other, our languages, writing, texting - they’re all single syllables, small sounds or gestures put together to make one word. Which then comes together to make sentences and then paragraphs and further even books. I thought about how a painting comes together, tiny strokes on an empty canvas; sculpture, everything. And yes this is Abstraction.

But Abstraction, is a weird concept. More on that another time.

So yeah. This is how we came to be the “most intelligent” species on earth. This is how we’ve come so far, with tiny incremental steps. A long way, with a lot of steps. A lot of work and hard work.

We’ve evolved so much, from communication being this primitive method of letting each other know of a food source or a predator, to communication having become this process of sharing out entirety with each other, as much as possible. And isn’t that what we’re still improving on? BCIs such as Neuralink, they are these advances we’re making toward better expressing and understanding. To be able to share more and better. The time lag between our thoughts and expressions, the time lag between communicating with all those across the world, it’s becoming closer and closer to zero.

This is what 11-12th Math was all about (calculus, I mean).

But until we have a good enough and of course, affordable enough BCI with which we can communicate with one another, we just need to learn to better express ourselves. To communicate our ideas and thoughts.

Which is why, this writing exercise. Because I am not the greatest when it comes to being clear and concise, as you can see.

I wanna improve on that. I want to be able to get an idea across, better. And I want people to understand me when I’m trying to say something. I also want to be able to maybe help others do the same. So I am going to be writing one blog post a day for a hundred days.

And this, is Day 1.