What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher

http://www.scottcowley.com/blog/what-you-find-while-cleaning-out-the-office-of-a-world-class-researcher

by scottcowley • 11 years ago

94 36 11 years ago

wmat3• 11 years ago

I love this. It describes a reality that I think exists into the present day. Regardless of our passions, real life is always there, filling ashtrays and picture frames whether you want it to or not.

Zenst• 11 years ago

Indeed and the last part "And you realize this is what happens when you keep coming to work years after you’ve mentally retired. This terrifies me." A worrying and yet some how sobering thought once you realise, we all get older, less agile physically and mentally in different ways.

wmat3• 11 years ago

It's interesting how paralysed by <insert reason here> most people really are when it comes to pursuing whatever it is they want to pursue. And I count myself within that group; for now.

lifeisstillgood• 11 years ago

Don't be terrified. I suspect that once your professor had nothin left to prove, other things started to become more important - ground breaking happens when you walk where no one else has, even if that's not leading anywhere but home.

Perhaps the best research we can do is about us and our loved ones.

fragsworth• 11 years ago

This is incredibly depressing. I hope I stay active and relevant, well into my old age.

dj-wonk• 11 years ago

I'm not sure how one writes an upbeat article about cleaning out an office. :) A career is (or at least should be) much more than artifacts left behind.

wnissen• 11 years ago

Yeah, what would really be depressing is if we were ranked based on the artifacts instead of the impact. It's really hard to tell from the plaques and detritus who was out there providing the shoulders for others to stand on.

nether• 11 years ago

What's wrong with being irrelevant?

crimsonalucard2• 11 years ago

The inevitable reality of life. Most of us will end up this way.

Rather then trying to change the universe, I say it's better to enjoy the experience.

astrocyte2• 11 years ago

Some strive to understand it and share their understanding of the world with others. It is often a lonely path and those who take on this challenge should be celebrated whether or not great contributions stem from it. After-all, many great technologies you enjoy and use to 'enjoy your experience'derive from it. If everyone partied and enjoyed their experience, it is questionable whether we'd still be around as a human race. And lastly, some people enjoy their pursuits.

crimsonalucard2• 11 years ago

I think the enjoying the experience is the road less traveled. Most people I know live the 9-5 grind.

mc32• 11 years ago

I think it's better to review a life or career as a whole rather than parse it and assign some sentimentality to the different aspects. In other words, so he or she may have 'mentally retired' but don't count that against anyone. It's not like were supposed to live full bore till you keel over. Maybe they called it in. Never the less they did accomplish something -more than many. That's not something to feel sorry about.

These are, after all, just people. People the same as the homeless or the newborn. Queer as folk, as they say. We're just folk. A bit strange but folk none the less.

astrocyte2• 11 years ago

It would appear that people take away what they want from an experience.. Defined as the subjective experience.

There are many other views ..

I may take over this guy's office and leave behind the same stuff he did, albeit newer versions, and never accomplish a fourth of what he did
Even though he was passionate about what he did, he still had important things outside of it like a beautiful family
People go through things in life. Yet, they carry on.
Form and function... Function being the same, what is really changing?
I will never truly know a person's story until I take the time to hear it from them.. Otherwise, I'm likely making up my own story that confirms with my own beliefs.

The author of the article has fears most of all and he molded what was left in the office to conform to those fears.

Whose to say what mental toll great accomplishments take... If it takes you 50 years to create what one man did in 5, who are you to comment on 'coming' to work for the remaining 45? All things being considered, in the aforementioned example, at least his work had 45 years to be shared and built upon. What of a person who takes 50?

slowernet• 11 years ago

The office holder had a long, accomplished career, but the author, bummed that he can't find any up to date books to steal from the office, is calling him out for phoning it in because he accumulated some junk over the years and went through a tough time when he lost a child.

Pardon me if I'm not dying to hear the insights this experience triggered for you.

CodingCat• 11 years ago

insightful....:)

et2o• 11 years ago

"[...] And you find an empty bottle of anti-depressants.

And you realize this is what happens when you keep coming to work years after you’ve mentally retired. This terrifies me."

I may perhaps be overly sensitive to this, but this juxtaposition makes me a little uncomfortable.

oxryly1• 11 years ago

This is interesting, but seems to end on an unfair note. Perhaps our good professor's interests and activities slowly moved in a different direction that didn't leave the same recognizable paper and object trail...

jlees• 11 years ago

Indeed - giving talks, supervising research students, etc.

Having said that, I worked with a professor who had effectively taken the same route; his work was relevant in the eighties and hardly used since. My job was to try and reimplement his algorithms (ALGOL 68) in Java, which involved talking to him a lot to understand the work -- it felt like he was genuinely happy to have someone to talk to about it, and various departmental shifts and changes over the years had gradually disconnected him from the world, rather than his own decision to start gathering dust.

bsder2• 11 years ago

I have a different take about the books.

Worthwhile technical books have not been published since about 2000.

Technical publishing died in the dot-bomb. The number of new technical books I bought prior to about 2005 was staggering. The number of new technical books I bought in the past 5 years borders on zero.

First, the web killed a bunch of technology publishing. Buying "new" technical books rarely makes sense as the target is probably moving too quickly and the web will be more accurate. So, the only "new", worthwhile technical books are covering more timeless fundamentals, and we probably already have good books for those.

Second, the attitudes of modern youngsters are a bit of an issue. "If it isn't on the web, it doesn't exist." Well, there was a whole lot of history prior to 2000, but none of you know how to find it. That's why you all keep making the same mistakes.

Third, technical books got ferociously expensive. Most technical books that are covering something semi-cutting edge are almost $200.

Fourth, there are no outlets for technical books to be browsed. Amazon killed all the technical bookstores because it wasn't paying sales tax. If I can't browse a book, I'm certainly not paying $200 for it.

So, while this might be an office of someone who checked out 15 years ago, the lack of books later than 2000 isn't good evidence.

mathattack• 11 years ago

I hear you on technical books, but I think the author (a Phd candidate in Marketing) has a different definition of Marketing.

drallison• 11 years ago

Amen.

I have been (and still am) an advisor to Pearson, which now includes Addison-Wesley and Prentice-Hall, ran a book series on "Innovative Technology", solicited authors, and helped get important books published. Outstanding technical books are few and far between these days. Hank Warren's Hackers Delight is one worth reading as will be the forthcoming The Programming Language Go.

There has been a corresponding erosion of the content as the number of books has decreased. In the old days, books were a primary mechanism for sharing knowledge. Today, rather than consulting a integrated linear presentation of technical material in a single (nearly) comprehensive volume, technical information is burried in papers which hide principles with details and confuse matters with non-standard terminology. It is not only the technical literature that has been degraded. Business books have become the equivalent of brain-dead landing pages where a single simple idea is presented in a verbose and focused narrative style.

prestonbriggs• 11 years ago

Hi Dennis. Yes, and hooray for Hacker's Delight!

I recently had occasion to reread one of Kernighan's older books and you remind me that I'll probably enjoy the Go book too.

wmat3• 11 years ago

I miss FatBrain. That was a good online technical book store.

marincounty• 11 years ago

I can't blame it all on the Internet.

I am old enough to remember, if you needed to know something, you went to the library.

Even then, I was always disappointed in the new section, most of the Reference section, and technical sections.

I know libraries can't stock a bunch of esoteric technical books, but it shouldn't load(waste precious funds) the library up with dubious self-help psychology books, and books on gardening. I never got the full rack on gardening, and one out of date book on Botany? (Noting has changed in regarding new book buys?)

bsder2• 11 years ago

The question is: what purpose should a library serve?

A library that never gets used to check out books, rightfully, deserves to get shut down.

Unfortunately, that means dubious self-help psychology books and the latest Oprah feature.

God help us if someone manages to ever take out the Internet.

microcolonel• 11 years ago

Idunno, I'm from 1997, and I still buy paper books because the reading experience is better. I don't think that people think "If it isn't on the web, it doesn't exist." even if that's a popular characterization.

rokhayakebe• 11 years ago

I'm from 1997

I so envy you.

breischl• 11 years ago

What people leave behind is the things that don't matter anymore. I've walked out of offices with all my recent/relevant possessions, leaving behind nothing but books about fancy new technology like DHTML and ASP.NET v1.1. Most likely the professor took all the more recent stuff with him, and left behind all the decades-outdated research and technology because he didn't want the hassle of moving all of it just so he could dispose of it.

That said, maybe he was phoning it in for years. That would be sad, because it's a waste of time and life.

digikata• 11 years ago

Hmm, sometime in the last decade, I started shifting any remaining 'book' consumption for technical literature purchases to ebooks. They take up less space and are portable between home/office, are searchable... etc.

yodsanklai• 11 years ago

This happened to me too after a "world-class researcher" from my lab retired. We received an email from the lab director telling us that everybody was invited to go pick up books in his former office. Everything left behind would be thrown away.

As expected, there were nothing of interest there. Old books and articles (I assume the best stuff was taken by other people already!). Not much to talk about really. Not different from any other researcher's office.

Actually, maybe this was the only really thing noticeable. Despite being extremely famous, his office was similar to anyone else's office.

Unlike the person mentioned in the article, he was very active and passionate research-wise until his retirement. That being said, not being active research wise doesn't mean being idle! there are lot of useful and interesting things to do for an academic that don't involve research.

irremediable• 11 years ago

Poignant, but IMO not insightful. You could interpret this any way you please.

I'm especially pissed off by the way he mentions the anti-depressant medication bottle as a sign of failure. Maybe the professor would have been far more depressed if he hadn't been working on awesome new ideas. Maybe he would have been depressed either way. How is the empty bottle a sign of failure? He sought treatment for his mental health problems. If you scorn that, you're a coward, and I attach very little weight to your opinions on how to live.

monk_e_boy• 11 years ago

I didn't read that as a sign of failure. I thought the author hit the nail on the head - they guy achieved more than us, but spent his latter years just cruising. I didn't read any malice into it, more a whimsical melancholy.

If I ever get an office (99% unlikely) I'm sure it will be the same as my cubicle. A photo of the wife and kids, my coffee mug, some hidden postits with passwords on... I mean, who gives a shit? It's space to work after all, nothing more.

PhantomGremlin• 11 years ago

The "anti-depressants" are mentioned in the sentence following this one:

   And you see pictures of a little girl —
   the daughter you know died tragically young.

I've never taken an anti-depressant in my life. But if one of my daughters died I'd certainly consider it.

ternaryoperator• 11 years ago

The conclusions of this article seem wrong. What the author is seeing are the books the ex-academic left behind. Surely, he took the good ones with him. In fact, he likely took all the things he wanted to keep and left this stuff, which the author deems significant, because he didn't want it.

Jugurtha• 11 years ago

Everything in the post almost exactly matches. The only things that don't match are the fridge and the ashtray.

I was like a scavenger roaming in the dark faculties. The best were Physics and Electrical Engineering faculties, and the labs of few of our Maths Profs (I had the ones who wrote our textbooks for Electricity and I'd press them to give me some stuff they had (usually unpublished for personal use). I had few gems along the way.

I've found a lot of stuff and was often burried in the pile they just put next to the appropriate lab's door. It gave a glimpse on where the labs were coming, what was their focus at a given period, what were they working on, thesis titles, how students prepared them, what did they use to produce it, which languages, etc. These things aren't online or in a database.

I still have most of my stuff from college. There's a bunch of things that are cool(the course in 4th year on Control Theory for example: information that _quickly_ gets you to speed on RST digital controllers, Pontryagin, Bellman is pretty scarce). I wasn't in good terms with the Prof, but boy she had a great course.

So I appreciate what I find looking in those dusty places.

shard• 11 years ago

Maybe he moved his life online? I have slowly stopped buying books, CDs, DVDs, photo prints after the early 2000s. I don't think it's that uncommon...

What You Find While Cleaning Out the Office of a World-Class Researcher

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