Understanding Through Building
- building things has been my go-to way to gather deep understanding
- implementing small demos of creative-coding ideas
- implementing papers to be able to "interact" with them
- building Realtalk-like system after visiting Dynamicland to better understand their decisions
- building interactive sketches when exploring the solution space of a research problem
- maybe part of the reason that it works, is that it forces effort (and Understanding Requires Effort), but I have an inkling that maybe there's something more here
- I keep finding people who gather deep understanding about things by reading and immediately using what they read in some context - this doesn't seem to be always possible though, especially for abstract concepts
- connections:
- Working With the Material
- Constructivism - constructing knowledge from actions
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of course there's a Cybernetics lens on this, where acting generates knowing, and knowing, in turn, generates acting:
A common preconception is that generally, understanding should precede acting and that theory is superior to practice (which depends on and is justified by theory), with post-rationalisation usually regarded as a shortcoming. In the context of radical constructivism, this preconception seems shortsighted: If acting generates understanding, and understanding, in turn, generates acting, the relationship of acting and doing can be described more appropriately as cyclical.
— Christiane M. Herr - Design Cybernetics: Constructing Cybernetic Thinking, Design, and Education -
this approach can be called "bricolage":
Claude Levi-Strauss recognizes "bricolage", a "science of the concrete" (...) Bricoleurs construct theories by arranging and rearranging, by negotiating and renegotiating with a set of well-known materials.
— Epistemological Pluralism - Styles and Voices within the Computer Culture - Sherry Turkle, Seymour Paper -
there seems to be an overlap between building and publishing a lot, and being able to find work which allows for building more - another example of how Following Genuine Interests Forms Positive Feedback Loops:
The sheer volume of your work is what works as a signal of weirdness, because anyone can do a one-off weird thing, but only volume can signal a consistently weird production sensibility that will inspire people betting on you. The energy evident in a body of work is the most honest signal about it that makes people trust you to do things for them.
— Venkatesh Rao - The Breaking Smart AMA ↗
I probably err on the side of just making things happen... I get so much of a thrill bringing things to life... as soon as it comes to life it starts telling you what it is.
— Dan Ingalls ↗