Madam Sandi Tells Your Future
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Ruby Conference 201434 / 65
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00:00
Storage area networkFocus (optics)Software bugReliefMereologyLogical constantGroup actionMatching (graph theory)EmailSpacetimeLattice (order)Level (video gaming)Self-organizationAssociative propertyImage registrationMultiplication signCrash (computing)WebsiteNumberGradient descentProcess (computing)MassOpen setStreaming mediaPoint (geometry)Bit2 (number)Different (Kate Ryan album)Sign (mathematics)Event horizonLecture/Conference
04:19
Negative numberLecture/Conference
05:00
SineSpacetimeArithmetic meanFigurate numberMilitary baseMultiplication signWeb pageRandom accessRow (database)Term (mathematics)Single-precision floating-point formatRight angleLecture/Conference
06:01
SineProcess (computing)WritingLibrary (computing)Service (economics)Self-organizationScripting languageFamilyLatin squareMaterialization (paranormal)Marginal distributionSpacetimeTorusCodeLecture/Conference
06:57
WritingSpacetimeComputer fontForm (programming)MereologyLecture/Conference
07:31
Storage area networkSineMereologyLecture/Conference
08:05
Storage area networkMusical ensembleDreizehnLecture/Conference
08:34
StrutElectronic visual displayObject (grammar)NumberMultiplication signMathematicsLecture/Conference
09:12
Storage area networkBarrelled spaceArithmetic meanGreen's functionCommercial Orbital Transportation ServicesGreatest elementLecture/Conference
09:42
Punched cardMultiplication signSqueeze theoremSpacetimeProcess (computing)System callPoint (geometry)Lecture/Conference
11:09
Multiplication signFiber (mathematics)Virtual machineBuildingWritingNumberVideo gameLecture/Conference
12:09
SinePoint (geometry)Quicksort1 (number)Medical imagingShape (magazine)Punched cardProcess (computing)Multiplication signComputer fontGoodness of fitLecture/Conference
13:00
Block (periodic table)Punched cardMatrix (mathematics)Right angleCasting (performing arts)QuicksortCombinational logicMereologyGreatest elementRevision controlPointer (computer programming)Slide ruleBit rateForm (programming)Point (geometry)Virtual machineLecture/Conference
14:08
Storage area networkVirtual machineQuicksortSlide ruleWeb pageType theoryLecture/Conference
14:48
Web pageMultiplication signRight angleForm (programming)Set (mathematics)Type theorySymbol tableMarginal distributionLetterpress printingWritingLecture/Conference
15:18
SineWeb pageForm (programming)Type theoryCASE <Informatik>NumberLetterpress printingProper mapSheaf (mathematics)QuicksortLabour Party (Malta)Event horizonMultiplication signAutomatic differentiationBlock (periodic table)Lecture/Conference
16:40
Storage area networkSet (mathematics)Multiplication signLetterpress printingMathematicsMetropolitan area networkWeb pageForm (programming)Block (periodic table)WordAxiom of choice2 (number)Type theoryComputer programmingField (computer science)AuthorizationFamilyLecture/Conference
17:50
NumberType theoryLogarithmExplosionWeb pageQuicksortMultiplication signLetterpress printingLecture/Conference
18:21
Data typeStorage area networkDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Arithmetic meanSet (mathematics)Virtual machineType theoryMatrix (mathematics)Matching (graph theory)System callMoving averageLecture/Conference
18:57
Type theoryLine (geometry)Uniform resource locatorQuicksortMereologyMatching (graph theory)Virtual machineMultiplication signMatrix (mathematics)Source codeCASE <Informatik>Moving averageComputer fontGreatest elementKeyboard shortcutTime travelKey (cryptography)SpacetimeLecture/Conference
19:49
GEDCOMRight angleLine (geometry)Key (cryptography)Keyboard shortcutMoving averageType theoryMatching (graph theory)SpacetimeNumberGreatest elementLecture/Conference
20:18
SineStorage area networkLine (geometry)Matrix (mathematics)Type theoryKey (cryptography)Keyboard shortcutMatching (graph theory)Moving averageDemosceneVirtual machineBinary codeLecture/Conference
20:54
Demo (music)Procedural programmingKey (cryptography)Moving averageLine (geometry)Lecture/Conference
21:24
Partition (number theory)Line (geometry)Nachlauf <Strömungsmechanik>Musical ensembleMereologyCasting (performing arts)Moving average2 (number)Multiplication signBuildingConditional-access moduleFitness functionLecture/Conference
21:54
SineMoving averageLine (geometry)Virtual machineLengthWeb pageProcedural programmingOrder (biology)Lecture/Conference
22:38
Line (geometry)Type theory19 (number)Multiplication signVirtual machineSchmelze <Betrieb>Operator (mathematics)Decision theoryWordLecture/Conference
23:47
Storage area networkMetropolitan area networkNetwork topologyType theoryForm (programming)Multiplication signWeb pageLine (geometry)Level (video gaming)Term (mathematics)Time travelComputer fontWage labourFreewareLecture/Conference
24:23
Storage area networkTerm (mathematics)Letterpress printingWage labourVirtual machineDisk read-and-write headComputer fontDrop (liquid)Lecture/Conference
24:55
Storage area networkProduct (business)InformationVirtual machineComputer clusterContent (media)Multiplication signLetterpress printingNumberDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Arc (geometry)Type theoryLine (geometry)Power (physics)NeuroinformatikLecture/Conference
26:10
WritingData typeNeuroinformatikTelecommunicationCorrespondence (mathematics)Multiplication signDemosceneVirtual machineExecution unitMereologyType theoryLine (geometry)Cellular automatonClosed setProcess (computing)Matching (graph theory)Web pageOperator (mathematics)WebsiteGraph coloringMoving averageLecture/Conference
28:32
Process (computing)InternetworkingContent (media)Keyboard shortcutTerm (mathematics)LoginInheritance (object-oriented programming)Letterpress printingOperator (mathematics)FamilyInformationIntelligent NetworkGame controllerMultiplication signWeb browser19 (number)Time travelVideo gameLine (geometry)QuicksortMortality rateType theoryElectric generatorPosition operatorMathematicsSurgeryVirtual machine2 (number)Web 2.0Spring (hydrology)Cellular automatonComputer programmingSign (mathematics)Software developerReading (process)Lecture/Conference
31:28
Storage area networkType theoryDigital photographyWindowVirtual machineVideo gameCASE <Informatik>Cartesian coordinate systemInheritance (object-oriented programming)MathematicsAbstractionArc (geometry)Computer clusterMobile appLecture/Conference
32:18
Storage area networkVideo gameMathematicsMobile appVideo gameComputer clusterCodeArc (geometry)Meta elementRight angleLecture/Conference
32:56
Suite (music)Keyboard shortcutCoefficient of determinationMultilaterationGroup actionMereologyMobile appLecture/Conference
33:42
BitProgramming languageRow (database)Different (Kate Ryan album)Open sourceType theoryLine (geometry)Operator (mathematics)Acoustic shadowRoutingInformationCore dumpLecture/Conference
34:15
Storage area networkInformationMetropolitan area networkMoving averageOpen setMappingScripting languageOpen sourceTorusLocal ringNeighbourhood (graph theory)Online helpMixed realityLine (geometry)Bookmark (World Wide Web)BitLecture/Conference
35:20
Storage area networkSineBitType theoryData managementSoftwareSelf-organizationLecture/Conference
35:50
Data managementDifferent (Kate Ryan album)SoftwareAxiomProgrammer (hardware)Lecture/Conference
36:28
Direction (geometry)Right angleMultiplication signMathematicsAxiom of choiceInformationVortexCondition numberTwin primeLecture/Conference
37:42
SineRoyal NavyStorage area networkMIDIObject (grammar)SoftwareEvent horizonVideoconferencingLecture/Conference
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:18
Also, so tell me, I was in the crowd yesterday
00:21
and your hands weren't up long enough. Who's here for the first time at a RubyConf? That's just amazing. Okay. If you're sitting next to one of those people, we have 30 seconds in which you can introduce yourself. So do it. Don't you just love RubyConf?
00:41
It's an amazing thing. Yeah, that we can do this. If you're new, we're very, very glad that you're here. All right, all right, come back now. Your time's up, time's up. Focus, focus.
01:01
I knew that would happen if I let you go. So RubyConf, the Ruby world is different. Okay, I have to pay attention because I'm ad-libbing, I can get out of here. This group, okay, there is a way in which out in the real world when we are not here, we are all just passing. You know that? You're like always sort of on the lookout
01:22
for that extremely bored glazed look in the eyes of the people that you're talking to. And then we come here and it's like it's just us and it's such a relief. I find it so comforting to be in this room. And part of it, for those of you who are really new, you may not have heard the acronym, Miniswan.
01:40
And I don't know if Matz is here this morning. That acronym stands for Matz is nice and so we are nice. Yeah, here he is, right in the front. Matz is nice so we are nice. And part of what makes us a community, like we're a community online, but we're also a community because we get to get together in a group like this.
02:02
And somebody makes that happen. And I can promise you, it is not me. I suck at event organization. Actually I got here yesterday morning and I asked the organizers for some numbers about the conference. I suggested it might be interesting for everybody to know what the whole thing cost and what part of that cost your registration fees paid for.
02:21
And I wanted to know some other things like how many CFP proposals they evaluated. Like there's a ton of work. Somebody received a T-shirt. Somebody got all the signs made. Somebody arranged the AV. And Abby, who's one of the organizers, told me if I would send her email, she would answer me. Despite the fact that she had a million things to do yesterday, she would send me back that data so I could tell you from stage. And then of course I forgot to send that email.
02:43
And I got email from her last night that said, what do you need? I will look those numbers up and get them to you by tomorrow morning. And at that point I thought, well this, it was enough really. It adequately illustrated the difference between me and her already. And so I don't have that data for you, but what I am gonna do here,
03:01
let's do two things. Somebody made it possible for us to be here. And I am enormously grateful. And they not only did all the work, but they got all the sponsors. And the sponsors are putting up money. And it really, really matters. I'm gonna name them. Open Gov, Bugsnag, Constant Contact, Engine Yard, Nine Fold, Stitch Fix, Pluralsight, Rackspace, WePay,
03:22
and all of the organizers. They make it possible for us to be here. It's part of what makes us us. Our culture gets built when we get to be together like this. And so my job here is not just to be grateful
03:40
for being here. This morning I'm here to tell you your future. But, and I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna tell you your entire accurate future. I'm gonna do that about 29 minutes from now. And between now and then, I'm gonna tell you your past. At least your past if you look like me, if you're of European descent. If you're from West of here,
04:01
if you're from Japan or China or Korea, or if you're from South of here, any place in the Americas. Your story's a little bit different, but all of these histories are like tributaries. And there's a stream. They form together in a stream and lead eventually to the present so that we're all here together. And this story, the story I'm gonna tell you starts with scrolls.
04:22
First invented perhaps as long as 7,000 years ago. And certainly they existed in ancient Egypt by 3,000 BCE. Now if you haven't heard that terminology, BCE stands for before common era. It's now what they're saying instead of BCAD.
04:40
So there's a before common era and a common era. And now that I've defined it, I'm just gonna quit using it. And from now on I'm gonna use just negative numbers. So this document is written in inker paint using a reed or a rolled up metal tube on papyrus of that plant found along the banks of the River Nile.
05:01
And here's a closeup of it. You can see there's not much in the way of spaces or punctuation. There aren't many readers at this time, but there aren't many writers, and they just have some bargain. They can all figure it out. They know what this means. And so scrolls were the very latest in technology from minus 3,000 until right up around the year zero when the Romans got involved,
05:21
and they created something called a codex. And a codex is just what we would call a book. It contains pages that are bound together along one edge. Books are better than scrolls in that they're random access. You can flip through it and find the thing you want. It's easy to replace just a single damaged page.
05:42
And for the very first time you can read and write at the same time. You can read with one hand and write with others. This codex is thin sheets of wood. The pages are thin sheets of wood, and they're covered with wax. And you scratch on them with that stylus and make a short-term record. This is like a Roman etch-a-sketch kind of.
06:02
So starting with Romans, books begin to be created by monks in what they called scriptoriums in monasteries. And as far as I can tell, scriptoriums are kind of like a co-working space for writing. They're, but since all the materials are incredibly flammable, and the scriptorium is usually right next to the library, the heat is never on.
06:23
And monks do, the monks who did all the copying, they're just like us, right? You know, if you're having a bad day, or you're working on some code you hate, or you don't like the app, or you hate your job, you might voice your opinion in a snarky comment. And the monks would write little things in the margins. Little complaints, my feet are cold.
06:41
My hand is cramping. It's all over those old books. And so this painting was commissioned in 692, and it shows a monk in a scriptorium. It's clearly summer because the guy's barefoot. And so monks, being religious people, they write about religious things. They write Bibles and stuff for religious services. Here's an example.
07:00
It's in Latin, and it's from what they call Psalter, which is part of the biblical book of Psalms. This was written around 1300. And notice the writing is really different now. There are spaces and punctuation, and there's an obvious font. Even though this is handwritten, this font has a name. It's Gothic, Liturgical Hand. And there's also a more ornate form of letter
07:23
that starts sentences and paragraphs. And this sheet, this document, was written by Quill on parchment. So monks started using Quills around the year 600. And the very best Quill for a right-handed writer comes from the left primary wing feather of a goose.
07:44
And a big book like The Complete Bible takes about five years to copy. And a Quill lasts about a week. Yeah, you're gonna need a lot of geese. And parchment's made from sheep. And a big book like The Bible
08:01
is gonna take many hundreds of sheep. And so it's also true that you're gonna need a lot of sheep. And the very best parchment is called vellum. And it's beautiful, it's fine, it's supple, it's easy to erase, it's easy to work with. And it's a kind of parchment, but it's made from baby sheep. And the pictures all broke my heart.
08:22
So there will be no illustration of vellum. Here's another. This is sheep music. It's 13th century sheep music. It's just beautiful. And so from their start in zero over the next 600 years, codexes gradually replace scrolls. And from 600 into the 1400s,
08:41
books are written by parchment on hand using quills. And by 1407, the monks are making things like this. This is the apex of their craft. This is a Bible. It's on display today in an abbey in England, in Malmesbury, England. This is 1407. But just 40 odd years later,
09:02
by around 1450, there's a dramatic change. So at this time in Europe, there are a number of objects that are under the eye of everyone. Everybody knows about these things. And the first one is the wine press. Here's an example of one. This is how they work. There's a handle at the top, and it's on that shaft, which is actually a screw.
09:21
And at the bottom of that screw, there's a lid that fits inside the barrel. And so you can screw it up. You can screw it all the way out and fill the barrel with grapes and then screw it down and press the juice out of the grapes. So this is arguably less romantic, but certainly more efficient than pressing juice out of grapes with your feet.
09:41
Everybody knows about the wine press. Next there are coins. So these are Roman coins from the year, from earlier, from like 75 to 79. That's 0075 through 79. And here's how coins are made. So many cards. You get in any of the front and in any of the back.
10:00
So you have two pieces and you get a blank, a coin blank, and you heat it up and you make a little sandwich. Those innies are called dies. So you have a front die, a blank, a back die. You put them together in a sandwich and you whack them with a hammer. And the blank deforms into the space and it makes a coin. Now the people who made coins and people who issued coins really, really, really wanted all the coins to look just alike. And the problem with those dies
10:21
is they get hit by the hammer over and over again so they wear out quickly. And so it didn't take long for people to figure out that they needed to add another process to the front, and that's this idea of a punch. And so a punch is a rod that someone carves the front of a coin on the end of one rod and the back of a coin is carved on another rod. You can turn the rods around
10:40
and whack blanks to make dies and then you use those dies over and over again to make coins. And so in this way, the dies wear out quickly, but when a pair of dies wears out, you can throw them away and use the punch a second time to make more dies. And so it's possible to make many, many coins that look just alike using this notion, this punch and die process, which everyone in Europe is aware of how this works.
11:02
And so the third thing that's available around this time in the 1400s is something that's been around for about 100 years. It came from China around 1300, and it's paper. Now relative to parchment, paper is a total fail. It's weak, it dissolves in the rain, it can't be erased a million times, it's not very durable,
11:20
but you can make it from rags and hemp and other plant fibers. And it's expensive, but while it's expensive, it is not nearly as expensive as sheep. And so in the 1430s in Mance, Germany, these three things are under the eye of this man, Johannes Gutenberg. And he's a blacksmith and a goldsmith, and ultimately he becomes the inventor
11:40
of the modern printing press. He combines these three things into a grand idea for something he calls an automatic writing machine. And he's obsessed with it. Building it takes the rest of his life. It leaves him in serious legal trouble. It ends up driving him into bankruptcy, it makes other people rich, and it changes the world.
12:02
It takes him many years to make the printing press work. He wanted to print books, but like all this, what he did was he spent a number of years shaving yaks. And the biggest yak he had to shave was making this. This is called a sort. And you can see it looks like a coin punch. It is an end. If you ink that in, and you press the inked in on a sheet of paper, it will faithfully transfer that image.
12:23
But it's actually way trickier than a coin punch because the shaft, the size and the shape of that shaft really matter. And it has to be exactly right. And you need, to make the printing press work, you need a bunch of sorts. You need lots. You need every letter and every font and every size. And they wear out quite quickly.
12:41
And when you make new ones, they have to not only have the letter on the end, but the shaft has to be exactly right. And so the printing press is not gonna work until there's a reliable way to copy sorts. And Gutenberg spends many years perfecting this process and he borrows money the whole time. Like he is in debt up to his ears, to the VC folks.
13:01
And here's what he ends up doing. This is it. On the left you can see a thing that looks like a punch. A craftsperson carves the letter, the Audi of the letter, in the end of a block of metal. And then they temper that metal to harden it. And then they turn that punch around and they punch the indent of it into a softer block,
13:20
that thing on the right, which is called a matrix. And they're gonna use the matrix to cast the end of a sort. The thing they cast in is called a hand mold. Do not even bother to try to understand this. I have looked at it a lot. Here's what I can tell you about a hand mold. The thing A, the thing on the very left,
13:41
is the combined parts of B and C. So B and C are the exploded version of the hand mold. The matrix that you just saw on the prior slide slides into the bottom here, I'll show you in my pointer. It slides in right there and right there. That's where the matrix slides in and the lead gets poured in the top right up here.
14:00
And so somehow, something about what's inside here creates that sort. And so once Gutenberg had a way to make sorts, he made a machine that looks like this. And you can see there's a wine press. You can see the handle for the wine press. These are sorts collected in what they call a form. You could ink that form, flip the lever over,
14:22
slide it under, and pull the handle. And there you go. You have one side of one page of a book. And once you get the type set up, an experience team can now print 200 pages an hour. One day we were hand copying pages and the next we had the printing press.
14:43
So Gutenberg printed in total somewhere between 160 and 185 Bibles. A quarter of them on vellum and the rest on paper. This book is 1300 pages long and it was completed sometime between March and November of 1455, right before Gutenberg went bankrupt
15:02
and lost the rights to the printing press. So now he's gone. He's completely gone from the story. But the invention remains. And it dramatically speeds up printing. All kinds of new works begin to get written. And the primary cost of printing is now in the setting of type. Before you can print a page,
15:20
you gotta collect all the type you need in every letter, in every font, of every size, and you have to assemble them correctly into the form for the page. And that's a lot of type. It's drawers and drawers of type. And over the next 400 years, a number of conventions emerge in print shops. That bigger form of more ornate letter that starts sentences in proper nouns
15:42
begins to, by convention, be kept in the upper cases. And the lower, when you need many, many more form of that smaller letter that you use in other places, and they are kept in the lower cases. And it is completely unambiguous to tell someone, go get me a lower case e. They know exactly which letter you're talking about.
16:02
When laying out a book, you usually don't have enough type to set all the pages for a whole book at once. So you have to decide in advance how many copies you plan to print of each page. Because you're gonna lay the book out in sections and print a number of copies and then tear down that type and move on and lay out more sections. It wasn't uncommon to discover that when you'd gotten to the end of the section
16:21
you planned to lay out, that you did not have enough type to do that whole page. And now you're stuck, right? You either have to commit to how many pages you're gonna print of everything you already have, or you have to buy or make more sorts. You had run out of sorts. Which, indeed, could put you out of sorts.
16:41
And the problem of having to reset type, because you'd unexpectedly need to print more copies, was solved in 1725 by a man named William Gedd. And he started making papier-mache impressions of forms of set type. And then he would use that papier-mache thing to cast an iron block that had all the letters in it so that he could print from that iron sheet.
17:03
He used stereotypes. These are stereotypes. And this is where our word came from. Stereotyping was expensive, so it wasn't commonly done. It wasn't the first choice that people had. In this time in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was already a famous author, wrote The Scarlet Letter. And his publisher, Tickner and Fields,
17:21
decided that it was gonna be a runaway bestseller. And so they laid out all the type and they printed 2,500 copies of that book. And it sold out in two months. And so then they reset all the type again, all the pages, and they printed a bunch more copies. And then that second print run sold out in four months. And then they reset all the type a third time, at which time they finally broke down
17:41
and stereotyped all the pages. So our word stereotype comes from this printing word. It became a metaphor for a set of ideas that are repeated with just small changes. So with the advent of the printing press, the number of books printed in Europe explodes. Note, this chart is logarithmic. That top number is a billion.
18:02
And while the presses have improved during this time, the sort for every letter on every page of every book that was printed was set by hand. And unlike books, newspapers have to set up and tear down type every day. In the middle of the 19th century, there was no newspaper in the world that was longer than eight pages.
18:22
And by the 1870s, many people are working on this problem, the problem of automating the setting of type. And by 1884, after eight years of work, this man, Ottmar Mergenthaler, has solved it. He's a watchmaker's apprentice from Germany, moves to DC and from there to Baltimore. And he makes a machine that revolves around something
18:42
he simply calls a matrix. Here's an example. And you can see on it that any of the letter W, this is a lot like Gutenberg's matrix. And if you take a bunch of these, they call them mats too, so if you take a bunch of mats and you stack them side by side, you can then pour molten lead into them
19:01
and dynamically produce a line of type. Now you still need a lot of mats. You need upper and lower case and every letter and every font and every size. But the machine dynamically casts type a line at a time, and so you don't need near, it makes sorts on the fly, basically. So you don't need nearly as many mats as you used to need of sorts.
19:21
And this thing, this mat, this matrix, is a central part of this machine, which Mergenthaler calls the linotype, linotype machines. And here are the parts. There's a keyboard down at the bottom. There's a keyboard above it. There's a magazine. There's a keyboard. When you press a key, a mat falls down out of this magazine. They fall through that chute and collect in this space.
19:43
There's also, this piece is called the mold wheel. Behind it is the melting pot, and then up here is the distributor. This is a closeup of what happens when you press a key on the keyboard. The mats fall down from the magazine through this shot, and they collect right on that line right there. Spaces aren't mats, they're actually shims.
20:01
You can see these things are fatter at the bottom than they are at the top. And so the way they justified lines of type for the newspaper is that bar, which is labeled number five in this picture, after you get a line of type, that thing would shove up, and the type would spread out till it hit the stops on the end. So they would mechanically do line justification. Once you've got a line of type justified,
20:22
you can see it's right there, it would go over on this mold wheel, which behind it has this, it's this melting pot where there's a plunger that shoves, I kid you not, molten lead down in here and up through this little shot thing back onto the back of the matrix, and that's how they cast lines of type.
20:40
Now all that's left is the mats have to get back where they came from so they can press a key on that keyboard and use them again. And so the end of them, you may notice that they have these teeth on that V-shaped end, but this is a binary code, all the teeth aren't the same. And so the mats go back up to the top of the machine and they get hung on this bar and pushed along by a screw till they get to a place
21:01
where it won't hold them anymore and they fall off back into the right slot. Believe it or not, I have a demo. Let's now review the entire procedure at a glance. The manipulation of the keys releases the mats from in the magazine.
21:24
They drop between the assembly entrance partitions and are delivered to a assembling elevator to form the line. The finished line is sent on to the caster. The mold and the metal pot advance
21:41
and the plunger makes the cast. The pot and the mold withdraw. Then the first elevator rises to transfer the mats to the second elevator bar. At the same time, the slug trimmed at the base and side is ejected into the galley. The mats go to the distributor.
22:06
Moved by the helicoidal screws, they run along the length of the distributor bars so that with the procedure already noted, they fall into the respective channels of the magazine ready for use in succeeding lines.
22:26
Thomas Edison called the linotype machine the eighth wonder of the world. Book publishers and newspapers bought linotype machines as fast as they could get their hands on them. Newspapers went from eight to 48 pages practically overnight. There was an explosion of printed material.
22:42
Suddenly we were sending typing lines per minute instead of minutes per line. Here's the place in the newspaper where all the linotype machines, where they all are, is called the composing room. And this is the composing room of the New York Times in 1942. And here's the Dallas Morning News.
23:01
So this room is a workplace safety nightmare. It is really hot. It's incredibly loud. There's molten lead. The machine will not stop moving. This is newspapers in this era. Newspapers are one of the few places in the United States that actively recruited deaf employees.
23:20
Because if you were gonna work in the composing room, it was best if you already had a hearing loss. Takes a lot of practice to operate these machines. He makes it look simple because they're really good at it, but it's very, very hard. They're making decisions on the fly about how much text will fit on a single line. They're just doing it. They're hyphenating words. They're doing everything. Those linotype machine operators,
23:41
if you type too fast, they get jammed. You can imagine. It's a nightmare. It's very hard to make operating that machine look easy. This is a man at the Dallas Morning News doing manual spell check. So once they set lines of type, they go out to what they call the makeup men in those little trays.
24:01
And here's a guy that, so everybody who does this learns to read upside down and backwards, left to right. They're laying out the sports page again in 1942 at the New York Times. So once the forms get put together, they have to level the top of the type so they all get inked evenly. And so this guy, you can't really see, he's swinging a mallet here. So he's just wailing on the form,
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trying to get the type leveled. So the linotype machine makes everything easier in terms of printing newspapers, but it's still quite labor intensive. The headings are such a big font that they still have to be set by hand. And it's completely possible to just drop something.
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And it's a real pain to fix typos.
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So you can never complain about CSS again. So this machine, the linotype machine, is responsible for an explosion of content and a brand new transparency of information.
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It makes it possible for newspapers to print anything they can find out every day. It boosts the production of books and magazines. The price of education goes down in literacy and everywhere. A worldwide skyrockets. Print becomes both affordable and ubiquitous. And in 1928, this was the primary typesetting device in the world.
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So back in the, I'm gonna give you some numbers now. In the 1500s, a thousand different printing presses created somewhere between eight and 20 million copies of just 29,000 different titles. By August 5th, 2010, there were 129,864,880 different books in print. More or less, according to Google.
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Information is power. And the linotype machine made it available to anyone. But as with all of these arcs in technology, the linotype syrene ended as quickly as it began. In the mid 1960s, it was replaced by the computer.
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And I remember when this happened. I grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and my father worked for the daily paper. He was officially a member of the printers union, and while he could and need to operate a linotype machine, he was actually a mechanic. It was his job to keep the dirty, hot, noisy, dangerous linotype machines and presses running.
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No matter what disaster occurred, they'd put a paper out every day. They took enormous pride in this. Some days it wasn't very big. Some days it was actually just a page or two, depending on what disaster had occurred. But when the newspaper was the only website that was, they never ever let it go down. My dad wore black clothes to work,
27:02
because it was impossible to get any other color clean. And his hands were always nicked and dinged and burnt. And there was no amount of that lava soap with a grid in it, like his hands were never clean. They never looked clean. And in my childhood in the 1960s, he would sometimes come home with brass mats in his pockets.
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But at this time, in this era, in the 1960s, hot type is ending, and it's been replaced by something they call cold type. And he studied electronics. He took a correspondence course in electronics and studied in a room in our basement. And I remember this, because, well, first of all, he had an oscilloscope, and that was so totally cool. Like, I so wanted to get my hands on the oscilloscope.
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And also, he was missing in the evenings a lot during that year while he was taking this correspondence course. And because at the end of it, one day, as a small child, I was sitting in his lap, and I noticed, I was startled to notice that his hands were pink and clean.
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The hot type was replaced by cold type, but the computers meant that there was a cathode ray tube where you could actually see the letter that you had typed without having to cast a hunk of lead. And my father swam, he learned this technology. He swam across the transition from cold to hot type. And he spent many, many more years
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in the newspaper business, though as had been true for scribes and linotype machine operators and setters of movable type, all those people before him, many of his colleagues did not. And so now, finally, as promised, against the backdrop of 5,000 years
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of the creation of content and the control of information, it's time for your fortune. And brace yourself, because I'm gonna tell you the real truth, and some of it's hard. Everything will change. Everything. And the biggest change is that you will die. And everyone you know will die.
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Your grandparents, your parents, everyone. Some of them will die in quiet peace after long life well lived, but others will not be so lucky, and their ends will come in confusion and pain and with regrets.
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Others will die too soon before their time of accident or terrible disease or by their own hands. And they will leave you alone in guilt and anger and grief. And regardless of how they go, you'll see them pass. And one by one, as the generations ahead of you disappear,
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you'll feel yourself taking those giant steps forward in the mortality line. I know that this is your future because it's already my past. These things will come to be. Next, along the way, your body will fail you.
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Your eyes will weaken. You'll be unable to read street signs in unfamiliar places at night, or menus in dimly lit restaurants. You'll become increasingly dependent on your GPS and that little flashlight in your cell phone. There are reading glasses in your future. You'll have surgery on one or more joints
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and get on far too intimate a terms of their orthopedic surgery. You'll develop low back trouble and a repetitive motion injury. You've spent far too many years sitting at your keyboard frozen into position. And eventually you sort of just get stuck that way. Yeah, ask me how I know.
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All of these things have happened to me. And not only will your family change and your body change, but your work will change. I got my first programming job in the spring of 1978 just three short months before the New York Times last set a newspaper using a linotype machine. Mosaic, the first web browser,
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didn't come out until 15 years later. O.1A was released in June of 1993. And Ruby, the first real Ruby that we used, O.95, was released two years after that on December 21st of 1995. Now, it's only 20-some years after the first web browser, and now the internet is at the center of our lives.
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We live inside this bubble, so it's hard to remember, but the job you have today appeared as suddenly as that of a linotype operator. In the 60s and 70s, when photo typesetting appeared, these machines became worthless almost overnight. Newspapers disposed of them by throwing them from upper story windows into parking lots
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and having them hauled off for scrap. So there you go, that's your fortune. It doesn't involve an unexpected inheritance or a tall, dark stranger. Unfortunately, those are edge cases. This is your real fortune.
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This is the thing you share in common with everyone in this room. You can think of it as being on a happy path of the app of your life. And I admit, it sounds bad. Death, decay, and obsolescence. What's not to like? But in the arc of your life,
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this is the happy path. These are the things that you can depend on. They're the abstraction, the meta layer that stands above all of the daily change. If your life really were an application, you wouldn't ignore the inevitable. You'd get on this right now. You'd be writing code for these features today. Accepting the truth of this fortune makes it clear what's important.
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The MVP of the only app that matters are health, happiness, and the world we leave our children. And I want you to start working on this app right now. There's some low hanging fruit. And I get to stand up here, so now I'm gonna give you some advice. Happiness, live as if you know you'll die.
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Do real things. Tell everyone you love them today. You might think about getting a little dog. Health, you don't have to do anything dangerous, but do something. It's a rear guard action. Believe me, I know, but go down fighting. Take walks.
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Get an ergonomic keyboard. Get some exercise. Get a bike. Go to the gym. If it suits you, get a bicycle. You cannot make up tomorrow for not working out today. And believe me, I promise you, you're going to want your body later. So there are parts of the app you can work on by yourself, and parts of the app, but there are also parts that are more suited
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for us to all work on together. Our community is important. And your place in it matters. It goes without saying that you can contribute to open source, but you don't have to be on the Ruby core team to make a real, meaningful contribution. Showing up in small ways can make a big difference. It's still morning in our community,
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and if you stand up just a little bit taller, you can cast a very long shadow. So we can do things for ourselves, and we can do things for our own tech community, but we are also uniquely qualified to do things for others. We're bigger than the programming language that brought us here. We're members of a tribe, the tribe of information, and our lineage goes through scribes and typesetters,
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and through linotype operators, from scrolls to codexes, from scriptoriums to composing rooms, we carry the mantle of the open sorcerers of information. And I feel doubly a member of this tribe, since not only do I do this work, but I was raised by a man who came home with mats in his pockets and ink in his hands.
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My dad's now in his early 80s, and he happily works four days a week. Two of those at Enterprise Rental Car, I guess. Yeah, he's the guy who picks you up. And two at the local food bank, where he stocks shelves and does the books and mows the lawn and gets loans for people
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who can't keep the electricity on and tries to make sure that people don't go hungry. And despite his efforts, they do. I will not presume to say that you have an obligation to something bigger than yourself, but he feels one, and I inherited this feeling from him. Your schools need help. Your neighborhoods need help.
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If you want, you can pitch in literally. There are a million ways. This is one of my favorite. Habitat for Humanity, they build houses. I am not one bit religious, and so I just ignore all that when I go. I love this mission. We want to belong, and we want to change the world, and Habitat lets you do both of these things while working with dangerous tools.
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Once at Habitat, I kid you not, they let me drive the Bobcat. But even if you're not the nail-banging sheetrock I can tell you from personal experience that Habitat's volunteer management software sucks. As a matter of fact, I feel comfortable making a sweeping generalization about which I hope you will not tweet.
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All of these organizations, like the people who are doing these works, wrote their own software, and they are not programmers. That software sucks. We can make a big difference just by improving that. Everywhere I look, there's something that needs doing, and I can promise you there is deep satisfaction in taking care of it.
36:23
It's an axiom among cyclists that either there's a headwind, or you're having a good day. And I'm always tempted to claim a fast, wind-assisted ride as my own accomplishment, as if I really am that strong and did it all myself. But I can't forget that if my doppelganger,
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if little Sandy me were out on the same day, in the same terrain, under the same conditions, but riding in the opposite direction, that she would work just as hard but accomplish far less. We are here because we have done the work. We got into this tribe by dent of our own efforts and because of our care for our craft.
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But we have also been blown here by the twin tailwinds of chance and change. We deserve our successes, there's no doubt. But there's a way in which we are also here because we are lucky enough to have the wind at our backs. Having looked at the past, we can predict the future, change.
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And by an accident of timing, we stand at the vortex of that change at the intersection of information and technology. Unlike many others, we have choices. And the things we choose now will create the world that everyone sees next. I challenge you, choose something big.