I came across this a long time ago, but read it again, and laughed out loud several times. It's a good read.
It's also amusing to think of how "small" science was only just a few decades ago. I guess that's what exponential growth is.. (plus, I guess, survivor bias) Here we have one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century working at a startup for a bunch of wet-eared kids from MIT. But oh, looking at the wikipedia page of Danny Hillis (co-founder of Thinking Machines, author of the article), his thesis advisors were (drumroll) Marvin Minsky, Gerry Sussman, Claude Shannon. Not exactly nobodys either..
> I came across this a long time ago, but read it again, and laughed out loud several times. It's a good read.
I've read it before as well, but read it again recently due to this HN post (before it moved up in the stack, sometime last week).
While I always find it an amazing and amusing recollection of the period, at the end I always find a bit of "smoke" in my eyes, knowing that we have lost one of the greats of our age, and that I will never be able to say to him personally how much I have enjoyed reading and listening to his words.
Fortunately, though, we do still have those - and they seem to continue to inspire people - which is really something.
It's also amusing to think of how "small" science was only just a few decades ago. I guess that's what exponential growth is.. (plus, I guess, survivor bias) Here we have one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century working at a startup for a bunch of wet-eared kids from MIT. But oh, looking at the wikipedia page of Danny Hillis (co-founder of Thinking Machines, author of the article), his thesis advisors were (drumroll) Marvin Minsky, Gerry Sussman, Claude Shannon. Not exactly nobodys either..