The number of potential home configurations is possibly unlimited. However, not every configuration one might imagine is possible. A roof cannot be made to levitate without support. Yet innovations in home building have occurred, at times with dramatic effect. Those innovations are built upon understanding the principles of the engineering involved.

Likewise, computers can be applied to problems in perhaps unlimited ways. And yet, certain things are not possible; others could be possible if the engineering principles involved were understood and applied. We aren’t talking about inventing new molecular structures. It’s about using computing principles that we discarded when the price of computer capacity dropped: we thought we no longer needed them.

The cost of abandoning these principles is never presented on a single bill to an organization. Rather, they are hidden and agreed to in small decisions, which accumulate later into very large numbers.

If we think about how the machine works, and we dust off these long dormant principles, we find incredible power in today’s computers, power which makes some things possible. Rick has often said “How you solve a problem can be more important than what problem you solve.” If we use these principles, a host of other problems never appear.

In this Part:

Next:  Chapter 10: Reality

Previous:  Chapter 9: The Ivory Tower

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