QS PRN

Rules of academia:

• Questions are more important than facts
• Answers are temporary
• Models are provisional
• Failure happens a lot
• Patience is a requirement
• When you’re lucky, hopefully you realize it
• Things don’t unfold linearly
• If there’s free food, get there early

—Stuart Firestein 

Some random thoughts* 

• "In Math class, students hold a pencil. They may hold that same pencil in English, but what they’re asked to produce, how they’re trained to think and question – look different. In neither class is the pencil the focus." In computer science, the computer is the pencil. And just like we don't foster "pencil literacy" perhaps we shouldn't be talking about "digital literacy, but much more specific ways of doing, learning, living, and thinking...     
• I don’t remember where I first heard it but “The output of a system is the purpose of that system.” is one of the most thought-provoking things I’ve come across in recent years, often in a very uncomfortable way. It made me look at the harmful results of systems not as accidents or imperfections to be fixed but as intended, or at least tolerated outcomes. e.g., An economy that has homeless people is at least in part designed to make some people homeless.  
• “Blocking someone means you’re just afraid of what they are saying.” Listen, I put garbage in the dumpster, but that doesn't mean I'm scared of garbage. It means it’s rank and I don’t want it in my house. 
• You either die a hero or live long enough to become the Terms-and-Conditions bad guy.