Good thread on Metafilter, started by an article in the NYT on Asperger's syndrome.
Oh, man, that inability to tactfully deal with being right. Behold, the self-employed network operator.
I ran with a group of internet service providers in the late 90's, independent, iconoclastic, direct, blunt, self-employed entrepreneurs, and it was just amazing to watch them interact with each other in person.
Very complicated details of some technical aspect of networking that were being debated in other places were all just known to have been resolved because almost all of the people had thought long hours about the same problems and mostly reached the same conclusions independently. Someone would start a detailed question for the group, get 1/3 of the way through and half the people present would all blurt out the same one or two word answer, bam, topic over, next topic.
Things unresolved would disappear under an avalanche of analysis and debate relative to the topic for hours at a time.
I saw three guys wrestling an aspect of routing for literally 8 straight hours at a table off to the side of a hotel lobby bar(walked by several times over the course of an afternoon and evening, openly eavesdropping, which wasn't considered impolite at all) and after listening for the last hour mentioned that I found their conversation interesting, and could I buy them a beer? Ordered the beer, introduced myself, asked their names, at which point they introduced themselves. They all recognized each other from online interactions, but I was just fascinated that they had talked to each other all day and didn't even think to find out each others names until I brought it up.
Subject was all, identity nothing.
Posted by dglynn at April 30, 2004 12:33 AM