As a final note I want to address the quote at the beginning of this piece. The issue of thinking and doing is expressed in this writing. So is the issue of choice. I have always been biased to act. Much of what has driven the choices I have exercised is to build demonstrations of alternative ideas. I have been impatient with writing or just talking about things. Years ago, I gave up designing theoretical works. I seem incapable of work unless there is at least a possibility of building it.

Once, however, I have built - to some sufficient scale - I am very comfortable with the “market” accepting (or not) the work. I go mildly crazy when the “choice” to go another way is made without the alternative(s) sharing more or less equal ground. This, to me, is not choice. To me, because of ignorance of the many alternatives available, people make bad (non) “choices.” My work has always focused on two things: broaden the number of built examples and facilitate better ways of thinking about building and using them. These are the two aspects of choice: the what and the how. It is my belief - and our work at MG Taylor has demonstrated it - that people will make better choices when this is done. I have no desire, beyond these two acts, to influence what people actually do. In fact, I can care less. I am totally lasiefare in this regard. Many do not understand this about me.

If it is true that “thinking starts with action,” then my nearly 46 years of work (as of March 2002) have been about doing this. I am just beginning to see the faint manifestation of the ideas (built!) that I started with in the 50s. Now, it is time to “think in earnest,” as Merlyn says. For me, this has started with this “autobiographical” section of my web site. Knowing where you came from is a prerequisite to effective evolution.

One reason for starting this section of my web site three years ago was to begin this process. I hope to be “done” with this phase by the end of 2002. This work signals a shift in my focus - I am moving toward very discrete demonstration projects and, relatively, more publishing and teaching and away from broad, general business applications - although our business will go on. This is because both my life-cycle and the market opportunities converge in a way that allows it. After decades of learning and building a general purpose machine, I am now able to bring what I know into a series of built demonstrations. I will be able to pass on how this is done to those who want to know. This will “return” the gift my teachers brought to me.

This is the process of civilization as I see it.

There is another point. Most of what I know I knew by the time I was old enough to be aware of anything at all. I did not learn it or invent it. This is the intuitive part of the human experience. Learning to me has been learning how to understand and make real - in life - what I already knew from the beginning. My teachers helped me - enormously - in the doing of this. I did not get my ideas or impulse from them. Techniques, yes. Support, certainly. Do I employ what I learned from them? without question. But, I bend it to my purpose and my purpose is to accomplish what I dreamed from the beginning.