Came across this book in an NY times article and was looking forward to read the book, as it was relating to an aspect which is close to my heart, hacking.Hacking in geek's jargon is ripping apart software, packages, libraries, things and understanding stuff at level 0. In some sense,I guess there are two types of people, first kind who do not want to get their hands dirty a lot and would rather assemble, manage a set of people to accomplish some task, second kind are those who want to hack things and build things from scratch. By the kind of education I have undergone, I should be doing the former but I have found joy in the latter activity. In that sense, I could relate to the author was a Chicago Phd , academic, whom one would expect to write papers, do research and be a professor. Instead he chooses to become a mechanic. Why ? This book answers that question and much more. Author has organized the book in such a way that it traces author's experiences from being a young apprentice in a repair shop , to being a PhD from Chicago, to working in a cubicle, to finally coming round the circle to repair shop again.
Separation of Thinking from Doing
The author traces the dichotomy that has been built in to the society, courtesy the industrial clock-work mentality. In the so called knowledge worker world, it seems to many of us that knowledge , thinking etc is crucial and implementation can be done easily..outsource the code, break down the task in to process and decouple the process in to a simple components which require less skilled labor. Interesting the word, "compensation", comes from the fact that work which required high skilled engagement of both physical and mental faculties is reduced to a few mundane repeatable steps and the worker has to be compensated for robbing of this kind of work and replacing it with some less engaging work.
This essay is a call towards picking up a trade and working on that trade for a long time to understand, engage and produce something of value. According to the author, nowadays everybody is called an Einstein, be it a best buy worker, or a management consultant. However it is easy to forget the fact that Einstein or Rembrandt are , what they are because of their commitment and submission to something in the initial stages and subsequently mastering it over a long period of time.
To be a master of one's own stuff
A true gem of a statement in the book :
The best thing mentioned in the essay is about Yamaha warrior 2007 ad:
Life is what you make it . Start making it your own
The picture shows a guy in his home focused intently on the warrior. He's not smiling for the camera. He's lost in his work. Underneath the caption is written in small font, You only get one shot at life- may as well make it mean something!.
This sort of joy obtained by hacking things is never obtained by mere selection of pre built things, like wearing a good helmet, having a good rear mud guard etc. Joy , as suggested by the ad is only obtained by close tinkering of the machine to suit one's likes and dislikes. and such a close tinkering provides JOY and not superficial selection is what the entire essay is about.
Education of a Gearhead
The author narrates his experience as an apprentice in a repair shop in California. His interactions with Lance , Chas makes him work on things and allows him to ponder about the different worlds, one at home where his dad is a mathematical physicist who deals with beautiful abstractions, the other world is the mundane repair shop where utilitarian aspects triumph abstract things. Being in close proximity to repair personnel, he realizes the importance of attentiveness while repairing vehicles. The same set of data can be give different signals to different people based on their involvement levels. Spectator skills won't do. I get the same feeling when people merely sit around the fences and trying to guess the next hottest startup, next hottest trend....Why sit as a spectator? Shouldn't one not get involved in the game ? Well, as they say , different people get attracted to different types of dispositions.
Pure Mathematicians and Builders fall in one category. If you think about it, the builder and mathematician builds something out with a specific mental image of something. If the theory or building falls, it is entirely the responsibility of the creator. However motor repairing skills / doctor's skills are very different. They are inherently dealing with things they have not built. They are looking at fixing things which means the realizations of the problems are stochastic( This word was used by Aristotle to describe specific kind of arts which require attention and openness to things as they are). A specific write up in Robert Pirig's Zen and art of motorcycle maintenance is also mentioned to bring home the point that " At work, being good-natured , friendly , easy going and UNINVOLVED is useless" . In our lives we come across so many people such as described above who are good in nature but don't involve themselves completely in any specific activity and hence appear as spectators. It isn't fun to watch spectators as much as to watch players hitting the runs. Well, I believe it is better to play the sport and than watch either spectators or players :)
Further Education of a Gearhead : Amateur to Professional
The Contradictions of the Cubicle
Thinking as Doing
Author makes a strong case that tacit knowledge that is obtained from years of understanding, tinkering can never be replaced with algorithms, computer systems. I don't necessarily concur fully with the view of the author as I believe systems and raw computing power can be used as an effective aid for understanding. Lets say before the advent of statistical software, simulating and understanding various aspects probability distributions, stochastic processes would have been very difficult. High frequency trading which permeates the world of finance would have never flourished had there been no money produced by those systems.
However I do agree to the point that our society gives more importance to thinking rather than doing. However increasingly the lines are blurring. A feedback loop is the key and a person who is involved in both the steps is the person who is going to do something productive. Confining to only one part of the loop is not going to be effective, point in case are technical writers in IT companies. They write documentation with out ever writing a line of code, with out ever building a user interface. Result : Reams of useless English documents which serve as no purpose. Yes , indeed tacit knowledge which is gained by doing is somehow thought to be replaced by computers/ processes in a few fields,is a shaky ground which will collapse soon if not now.
Work , Leisure and Full Engagement
I felt that the last essay is the best essay of the book, because it probably echoes a similar feeling that I have about work and life. Examples quoted in this essay are numerous. Why does a mortgage banker work like mad and looks forward to Climbing Everest holiday? Why does corporate jetsetting consultant thirsts for a vacation in australia, Amazon's rain forests etc ? There are a class of people who live dual lives. In one part of their lives, they work and accumulate money. In the second part of their lives, for some it is weekends, for some it is end of year vacation, they release their pent up need for an experience where feelings and action are linked together. However there are a set of trades where one can live in one unified world where work and life intermingle and have a meaningful relationship between them. There are so many wonderful points made in this essay that my summary would do no justice to it. Overall takeaway from this essay is that finding work as a way of life is crucial to live a joyous life, else an individual is forever living in 2 worlds, one in which he/she makes money, and the other in which he connects with core need !
This become reminds me of Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham. Excellent in prose and to the point , where the central message of the book is to work on things which offer you to mix thinking and doing.
For those who are time strapped and are looking for a 2 minute video recap of the book, here is a youtube link :