Recursive Words

Today was a better day – I think mostly because I forced it to be. It’s funny how much difference a good night’s sleep can make. I woke with a start at perhaps 6:30am, had a shower and a coffee, and it was still not 7am.

While brushing my teeth I smiled at myself in the bathroom mirror – remembering my Grandfather’s insistence that the early morning hours were the best part of the day.

This evening, while my youngest daughter headed to Wembley Stadium to watch the Lionesses play Spain in a World Cup qualifier, I helped babysit the youngest member of our household – now three months old.

Almost every day brings a new behaviour now – a new aspect to her rapidly forming personality. In the early days and weeks it was all about eye tracking, hearing, and touch – now emotions are starting to make an appearance. Having not seen her throughout the day, my face appearing in her field of view conjures a broad smile. Tonight’s trick was turning her head to gaze rapidly around the room while feeding from her bottle – making the task of keeping the bottle anywhere near her mouth something of a gymnastics act.

I can only guess we are beginning to enter the “sponge” stage of her development – where all systems are coming on line to begin interpreting, processing, and absorbing everything around her.

It’s amazing really, isn’t it – the first few months in a baby’s life – where their brain boot-straps from the most basic of commands; to breath, eat, and sleep – and rapidly begins re-programming itself from the inside out for sensory input, recognition, and emotion.

Most of you know I work as a software developer. The company I work for is out on the bleeding edge of machine learning – both exploring applications for it, and trying to understand it. In many ways the “Artificial Intelligence” that people talk about is still at the stage of a gifted toddler – it has learned to read, to talk, and to reason – but knows little of the world.

There is a wonderful scene in the movie “AI” where William Hurt asks an android woman “what is love” – and without pause she begins describing the minute physical manifestations of attraction. There’s also the scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams character confronts his young charge with the realisation that he can’t tell him what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.

Anyway.

Late this evening I found myself alone in the lounge watching the movie “Jobs” – starring Ashton Kutcher as the title character. Quite unexpectedly at the end of the movie I found a tear falling down my cheek as the famous “crazy ones” speech was recounted.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

And here I am – sitting in the dark, tapping away on the keyboard of an Apple Mac – the legacy of a man who was by turns brilliant, monstrous, egotistical, obsessed, fanatical, or a colossal prick – depending on who’s stories you read.

He was right though. Thinking you can change things does require at least a little craziness. When presented with an idea, some only see obstacles – whereas others see the destination, or beyond.

I’ve never been particularly visionary. I’ll happily concede to being a “plodder” – making quiet progress forwards, and hoping to get from today to tomorrow without too much fuss.

The wonderful thing about only concentrating on the next step is that you don’t notice how much chaos or mayhem surrounds you – you just keep making the next step, and the next until you somehow arrive at a destination.