The leading psychologist of creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has long argued that creative activities such as writing, playing music, computer programming, mountain climbing, and chess playing are major sources of enjoyment and productivity. Such activities, he says, put us in a state of “flow,” or intense, unfettered focus and concentration. The beauty of this state is that we can have fun and be productive. The most creative people tend to fluctuate between intense interaction and intense concentration. They also tend to be the happiest when engaging in a state of flow.
That’s an excerpt from Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City. I’d never considered programming to be on par with mountain climbing, or even chess, really, but it makes sense: programming is really just problem solving. It requires absolute focus and a particular mindset to solve the problem of translating the vision for your project into code that the computer will understand and interpret as you intend.
Last week, the New York Times reported that New York City has subpoenaed the creator of TxtMob, a web- and SMS-based service that helped facilitate protestor communications during the 2004 Republican National Convention. From the story:
The subpoena, which was issued Feb. 4, instructed Mr. Hirsch, who is completing his dissertation at M.I.T., to produce a wide range of material, including all text messages sent via TXTmob during the convention, the date and time of the messages, information about people who sent and received messages, and lists of people who used the service.
The good news is that Tad Hirsch, TxtMob’s creator, is refusing to turn over any records, at least for now. The bad news is that this subpoena happened at all, adding SMS logs to the list of electronic communications that governments want to get their hands on, next to emails, web browsing histories and telephone calls.
Another unrelated yet awesome thing that Hirsch has done is to make the source code open and free. Maybe I could use this to power a future project…
My AOL data project has gotten me both interested in and terribly frustrated with the challenges of working with massive amounts of data. Data manipulation and optimization is not my bag, but I’m afraid it’s going to have to be soon. In any case, I thought I’d share some of the great resources I’ve found.
