Great quote and analysis from Alan Jacobs:
- Great quote and analysis from Alan Jacobs:
- Freeman Dyson writes:
- "It often happens that a scientific revolution is accompanied by a change in style.
- I like to use the names of Napoleon and Tolstoy to symbolize two contrasting styles: rigid organization and discipline represented by Napoleon, creative chaos and freedom represented by Tolstoy.
- In the world of computers, Napoleon is the massive IBM main-frame; Tolstoy is the humble Macintosh.
- The computer revolution was an escape from the Napoleonic ambitions of von Neumann to the Tolstoyan anarchy of the Internet.
- Future revolutions will bring more such escapes."
- Alan adds:
- "The big AI companies are the apotheosis โ literally, in the view of many who work for them โ of Napoleonic science.[a]
- The open web and the world of hobbyist and small-scale devices (often built on the Raspberry Pi) are our remaining refuges of Tolstoyan computing."
- What if we took Tolstoyan computing and applied it to using AI?