Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Context is important. The word sounds a bit academic, but the concept it represents is incredibly strong. Considering something in its proper context can dramatically affect the meaning conveyed. We may not often think of our work as taking place within a certain historical context. Perhaps we see the concept at work in other aspects of our life, oftentimes without realizing it. Nevertheless, it is there, affecting our experiences and those we pass on to others.

Consider a few examples of context: a team wins a baseball game. Your child’s team wins a little league game. He or she catches the game winning ball. Bill Buckner makes a game losing error. The Red Sox win the 2004 World Series, defeating the 86 year-long curse of the Bambino. Each variable that leads up to an event or a moment in time contributes different levels of meaning to it, some more or less than others.

We recently changed the naming convention of our conference rooms at my company. “Why Turing?” I have been asked by some. “Why did the names change at all?” “What was wrong with Michelangelo?”

The answer is historical context. Nothing was wrong with our old names, but they really didn’t contribute towards or derive from anything that we do. My company is a manufacturer of services within the technology industry. When we look at the term “technology” we probably think about what is going on today and tomorrow at the bleeding edge of internet applications, personal gadgetry and electronic entertainment. But we are less likely to look over our shoulder, at the individuals whose contributions to the fields of science, mathematics and computing led to this era of exponential growth in technological achievement.

Our choice of names for the places where ideas are exchanged derives from a desire to understand and appreciate the context within which our business exists. Before BGP, Unified Communications and Vista there were super-computers, Enigma, Turing machines and punch-card tabulators. And before that there were the revolutionary concepts of physics, mathematics, geometry and the natural sciences which paved the way for those of us who follow.

History testifies that for hundreds of years, the sciences of the western hemisphere languished in the intellectually stagnant era commonly (and aptly) called the Dark Ages. Although Arab studies of mathematics and science reached a zenith of intellectual development at this time, Europe did not participate until the 15th century, when the fall of Constantinople and the opening of new trade routes brought a flood of new ideas, new cultures and new economic opportunities into the trade cities of Italy. With this long overdue arrival of the Renaissance, a new period characterized by innovation and the growth of scientific thought began to emerge.

This is where we begin to see the individual contributions of great minds to the growth of western science. The men who stood out made great strides, often at the expense of their reputations, their freedom and at times, their lives. The best, though, challenged the process and the accepted knowledge not out of the yearning for indiscriminant rebellion, but rather out of a quest to better understand the truths behind the mysteries of the world, and a desire to do something positive with the knowledge they might gain.

As a result, we see men like Copernicus, Galileo, and DaVinci challenging the intellectual culture around them with ideas which ultimately proved to be groundbreaking in the course of human development. Moreover, they were followed by contributions from minds like Sir Isaac Newton, who is famous for the statement “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Newton understood the tradition within which he operated, and the debt owed to his predecessors.

In our own century, Albert Einstein perhaps best typifies this sense of incredible talent, built upon the countless achievements of others before him and driven on by his own unique personal genius. Moreover, in our own specific industry, we must count the name of Alan Turing, the British logician, mathematician and cryptographer. Known as the father of modern computing and famed for his WWII decrypting contribution at Bletchley Park, his studies built upon both Newton and Einstein’s work in physics and mathematics, ultimately leading to the concept of theoretical machines capable of performing any given mathematical computation. Turing Machines are a central concept in modern computing theory, whose abstract properties lend many insights into both computer science and complexity theory.

We do not operate in a vacuum, and the work we do does not end when we are gone. Though we may not ever become the topics of university lectures, which of us would ever strive for obscurity? The contributions we make will extend beyond our lives, and any greatness we achieve in our own right may enable others to reach new heights of their own. We are a business, but we are also learning organization with a remarkable desire to propel self-development, taking what is good and making it great. We should never settle for mediocrity, and we should never forget the shoulders on which we stand.