Shoulders All The Way Down
Ton Zijlstra,
Interdependent Thoughts,
Oct 22, 2022
We've all heard the expression, "standing on the shoulders of giants.". He's writing in the context of Chris Aldrich's essay about "the often actively ignored history of the things that make up the current wave of note making methods and tools." According to Ton Zijlstra (and I agree), "Every output is the result of processes, and building blocks that go beyond the person making the output. And most of those inputs and earlier practices are of a mundane origin." The expression should be, he says, "standing on the shoulders of everyone." I would go even further and note that the selection of 'giants' often reflects their status and privilege, rather than their accomplishments. We often read in these pages of a community effort that is suddenly attributed to a star researcher from Stanford, Harvard or MIT.
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