“Whenever a computation was needed, von Neumann, Fermi, and Feynman would begin to calculate, each after his own fashion. Fermi juggled his slide rule, Feynman pounded a desk calculator, and von Neumann calculated in his head.”
“There is thus a conspiracy of non-communication between the spectator who wants to gape and admire, but does not wish to know, and the performer who wants to impress, but does not wish to explain.”
”Before the days of computing machines there was a kind of competition (human, I mean) in seeing how far they could calculate π.” mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Men…
Technology obviously leads to a decline in mental abilities but it could be overcome with greater formalization of those abilities and discipline. The problem is that our culture is allergic to both of those things.
If you watch a neophyte try to cope with the internet, you realize you’ve gained incredible abilities from years online like being able to tell which parts of a news site are ads or figure out which button on a download page is the real one. x.com/yacineMTB/stat…
A fact that is almost too incredible to believe:
One Netflix cofounder is related to Edward Bernays, "the father of modern propaganda," and Sigmund Freud.
The other cofounder is related to Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War in both WWI and WWII.