Comments on: He called it the Pocket Crystal https://www.isegoria.net/2026/05/he-called-it-the-pocket-crystal/ From the ancient Greek for equality in freedom of speech; an eclectic mix of thoughts, large and small Tue, 12 May 2026 18:44:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: David Foster https://www.isegoria.net/2026/05/he-called-it-the-pocket-crystal/comment-page-1/#comment-3762382 David Foster Sun, 10 May 2026 15:10:51 +0000 https://www.isegoria.net/?p=54296#comment-3762382 “The great 20th-century composer Igor Stravinsky wrote, in The Poetics of Music, “You cannot create against a yielding medium.” Stravinsky’s innovations were nothing if not revolutionary, but he knew that he could not have produced them if he had not been constrained by the traditions of music and the mathematical strictures of tone. “Let me have something finite, definite,” he wrote. “My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength.”

(Nicholas Carr, from an old copy of Strategy + Business)

]]> By: Jim https://www.isegoria.net/2026/05/he-called-it-the-pocket-crystal/comment-page-1/#comment-3762381 Jim Sun, 10 May 2026 14:51:12 +0000 https://www.isegoria.net/?p=54296#comment-3762381

“They were free to imagine and play and invent and write,” he said. “They were inventing one thing after another, after another, after another and for an engineer, what more can you ask for?”

That’s the worst imaginable environment for engineers, who invariably need to be held down and whipped with soapful socks like Private Pyle at boot camp.

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