29 MAY 2014 by ideonexus
When Science Became a Profession
The possibilities of modem technology were first in practice realised in England by the energy of a prosperous middle class. Accordingly, the industrial revolution started there. But the Germans explicitly realised the methods by which the deeper veins in the mine of science could be reached. In their technological schools and universities progress did not have to wait for the occasional genius or the occasional lucky thought. Their feats of scholarship during the nineteenth century were the ...Rising from the prosperous classes and the reliance on occasional genius to a methodology for producing consistent results.
24 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
No Such Thing as Professional Photographers
...there’s no such thing as Flickr Pro, because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as professional photographers, when there’s everything is professional photographers. Certainly there is varying levels of skills, but we didn’t want to have a Flickr Pro anymore, we wanted everyone to have professional quality photos, space, and sharing.The Yahoo CEO took a lot of heat for this comment, but there is a great deal of truth to it. With digital photography, photographs are so pervasive that professionals are now competing with a horde of amateurs.