Learn from the mistakes of others

Particularly if you have control of (one of) the most powerful (technology) corporations ... you can wax lyrical about how excited you are about your own products and how they'll change our lives for the better.

It's hard to fault the logic that we'll continue to think new things, and talk about them, and so forth.

There are even nifty buzzwords like "consilience" to go with the excitement!

From Wikipedia:

Consilience, or the unity of knowledge (literally a "jumping together" of knowledge), has its roots in the ancient Greek concept of an intrinsic orderliness that governs our cosmos, inherently comprehensible by logical process, a vision at odds with mystical views in many cultures that surrounded the Hellenes. The rational view was recovered during the high Middle Ages, separated from theology during the Renaissance and found its apogee in the Age of Enlightenment. Then, with the rise of the modern sciences, the sense of unity gradually was lost in the increasing fragmentation and specialization of knowledge in the last two centuries. The converse of consilience is Reductionism.

In short, things make more sense in context.

Which is also the difference between information and knowledge. Something Mr Gates and I agree upon. However, I'm not so impressed with mere knowledge. To me, we ought to be aspiring to wisdom - knowledge is useless without a purpose. Something I'm all too familiar with.

Particularly if you have control of (one of) the most powerful (technology) corporations ... you can wax lyrical about how excited you are about your own products and how they'll change our lives for the better.

It's hard to fault the logic that we'll continue to think new things, and talk about them, and so forth.

There are even nifty buzzwords like "consilience" to go with the excitement!

From Wikipedia:

Consilience, or the unity of knowledge (literally a "jumping together" of knowledge), has its roots in the ancient Greek concept of an intrinsic orderliness that governs our cosmos, inherently comprehensible by logical process, a vision at odds with mystical views in many cultures that surrounded the Hellenes. The rational view was recovered during the high Middle Ages, separated from theology during the Renaissance and found its apogee in the Age of Enlightenment. Then, with the rise of the modern sciences, the sense of unity gradually was lost in the increasing fragmentation and specialization of knowledge in the last two centuries. The converse of consilience is Reductionism.

In short, things make more sense in context.

Which is also the difference between information and knowledge. Something Mr Gates and I agree upon. However, I'm not so impressed with mere knowledge. To me, we ought to be aspiring to wisdom - knowledge is useless without a purpose. Something I'm all too familiar with.