Language, Programming, Quirks, Conviction; Derek Sivers at RailsConf

{

“

Imagine that you are standing on a street, and you are in America, and a Japanese guy comes up to you and says “Excuse me… what is the name of this block?”

And you say “well, I don’t understand… there’s Oak street and there’s Elm street, this is 27^th street and that’s 26^th…”

And he says: “Yes but what is the name of this block?”

You say: “I don’t understand what you mean; blocks don’t have names, streets have names. Blocks are just the unnamed spaces in between the streets.”

He looks a little disappointed and leaves.

…

So now imagine that you are standing in Tokyo one day and you’re a little lost and you turn to somebody next to you and you say “Excuse me, what is the name of this street?”

And they say, “That is block 17 and that is block 16.”

And you say “Yeah, but what is the name of this street?”

And they say, “Streets don’t have names; that’s just the space between blocks 16 and 17.”

”

A great talk from Derek Sivers given at RailsConf earlier this year available on IT Conversations.

}