a perspective informed by Nietzsche, Koestler, and Kay
What do you do?
If you are working in technology, trying to build the future, a good answer to this question has become rote, in answering a second question: What problem are you solving? Experience X in the world sucks. A lot of people are suffering because of X, so we are solving X with our great new technology.
This second question carries the force of clarity. Nonetheless, this question can itself become a problem. When one takes on the full burden of the "problem question," it is implied that the job of a technologist is, first and foremost, to solve problems. This can confuse the people tasked with building the future on how the future can actually be built.
At its extreme, the "problem first" philosophy is a kind of technological nihilism. By "technological nihilism" it's simply meant that this philosophy reduces technological progress to two essential pieces: react and destroy. The world of today is filled with problems — negative experiences — and the march of technological progress happens when these problems are encountered and then eliminated. New technologies may introduce new problems, but on the balance, if technologists do the job right, we get closer to the end ideal: a world emptied of problems!
An example of a good technology is something like software to fully automate your taxes: remove a massive headache, don't create any new problems, and do it cheaply. We know what it's like not to do taxes on the weekend. Let's go fishing instead.
It is a net positive to fix our view on today's negatives, understand them, and iterate until their removal. By destroying what we believe to be bad, we can better our experience. But what happens when we reach, not for known problems, but for unexplored possibilities?
You have seen, as I have, playing-cards and pictures of saints . . . you see on [a card] . . . words as if they had been written . . .
Well what has been done for a few words, for a few lines, I must succeed in doing for large pages of writing, for large leaves covered entirely on both sides, for whole books, for the first of all books, the Bible . . .
How? It is useless to think of engraving on pieces of wood the whole thirteen hundred pages . . . What am I to do? I do not know: but I know what I want to do: I wish to manifold the Bible, I wish to have copies ready for the pilgrimage to Aix la Chapelle.
-Johannes Gutenberg (2, p122)
Gutenberg didn't start with the presence of a problem he needed to solve, but with the absence of a possibility he needed to see. He wanted to create a printed book, an abundance of words — a positive experience. Turning back from that reference point, woodcuts — the status quo — were immediately obsolete. In the case of Gutenberg, the nature of scarcity was revealed through a clear idea of abundance.
The problem with a "problem first" view of building the future is that it frames us in the present. As Kay says, the present exists in a state of "tyranny"; Nietzsche calls it "the Spirit of Gravity" (1) (3). In each case, a state of "normal" blinds perspective with what is already known and explored. However, a problem is often a relative thing. It is only when we escape "normality" — to an unexplored possibility — that we can illuminate problems we didn't realize we've been burdened with. With the perspective of a what a "yes" looks like, we can more easily say "no" to a present we didn't realize we don't want.
A true understanding of the weight of gravity comes from flying and returning back to the ground. In this context, the "problem question" serves as an extremely important sanity check to show you how the present is (not) inadequate. But this can also be an ex post exercise in the "game of creation," not just ex ante (3).
Most of the time when you're working on hard problems, you don't know what the right problem is. This is why visions are good. Visions are detached. If you pick a problem too early, you might be picking it out of the current context.
-Alan Kay (1)
Where's your frontier?
The common line of thinking that underlies this post can be found sewn in Nietzsche, Koestler, and Kay.
Koestler draws connections in the creative process between science & technology, art, and humor. Of the three, the "problem question" seems to weigh most heavily on the first. He illustrates many examples of "the problem" playing both ex ante and ex post roles in scientific and technological discovery.
All three thinkers note that to create at the frontier, an apparently paradoxical combination is needed. This combination calls for a playful beginners mind, free from the weight of convention, mixed with a good working knowledge of the conventions of the day.
Koestler points out that the simultaneous "abdication" of convention while "promoting" certain pieces of it in a creative act mirrors the "destructive-constructive" effects this act can have (2, p169). He describes how Gutenberg had a tremendous use for the present, after having leapt out of it. Gutenberg sat on his vision for some time, later using the idea of coin punches to create movable type. He then had the specific problem in transferring the imprint from the type onto paper; it wasn't until the wine harvest that he recognized the power of the wine press could be leveraged to create this imprint (2, p122).
Nietzsche:
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game of creation . . . a sacred "Yes" is needed . . .
This, however, is my doctrine: he who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance: one does not fly into flying.
Kay:
You have to learn everything and then find a way of forgetting it, so you can have your own ideas. So what you forget is everything but the perfume, so when you have an idea, then your nose will pick up the right scent, and you'll be able to make use of all the stuff that you've learned, after you've had the idea.