Can a human fly?

BBack in 1959 a person called Henry Kremer had a question… can a human fly? He donated a huge sum of money as a prize to answer the question. Specifically the question can a human fly, using only their own energy

So I’m pretty sure you are all aware that birds can fly, and that humans can’t

Humans have a pretty cool trick up their sleeve, we are able to make tools. Tools allow us to do things beyond our usual abilities, and they can be pretty powerful.

Steve Jobs, back in the very early days of Apple, before even the Macintosh, had this to say about us humans…Back in 1959 a person called Henry Kremer had a question… can a human fly? He donated a huge sum of money as a prize to answer the question. Specifically the question can a human fly, using only their own energy

So I’m pretty sure you are all aware that birds can fly, and that humans can’t

Humans have a pretty cool trick up their sleeve, we are able to make tools. Tools allow us to do things beyond our usual abilities, and they can be pretty powerful.

Steve Jobs, back in the very early days of Apple, before even the Macintosh, had this to say about us humans…

“I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts. And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

A bicycle for the mind! What an idea the computer is. Of course it’s all about what we do with them that’s really important. Not everyone loved the computer, Pablo Picasso had this to say,

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

I think both can be correct. The computer is the ultimate tool for the mind, it allows us to go faster and faster, but it can only give us back what we humans

Back to the plot… humans flying under their own power – Henry Kremer’s prize. The equivalent of $1.3m was a stake for the first person to win the prize and propel themselves over a figure of eight course. The prize was established in 1959 and over the next ten years dozens of teams tried, and tried and tried to solve the problem.

Then Paul Macready showed up...

… He arrived, looked at what people had been doing and said,

“The problem is, that we don’t understand the problem”

The average number of attempts per team to solve the problem was around once per year. Each team would come up with a new plan, build the plane, come to the airfield, test the plane, fail, come up with a new plan, and repeat the process.

Everyone thought progress was slow because this was such a hard problem! The problem wasn’t the problem, the problem was the process.

He decided to reframe the problem, how could you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours not months.

The first plane he tested failed, the second plane he tested failed, so did the third and the fourth. They failed by the original problem brief, they failed to be powered by a human to solo flight… but they succeeded in terms of the new problem brief… they could be fixed really quickly.

The 223rd flight was a success! They won the prize. The 223rd flight happened within 6 months of them first starting, they just kept iterating and iterating. They won, and in that time most of their competitors only had 1 attempt in the whole period of time they were working on the project. They won the prize within 6 months, the other teams had spent 10 years.

Fail fast is really, really important. Sometimes when people think about fail fast they think that means try human powered flight, and if that doesn’t work switch to something else. It CAN mean that, but it doesn’t always. Fail fast doesn’t mean don’t persist. They failed 222 times! That’s perseverance, incredible perseverance. You can imagine that in some ways it was more demoralising in the moment than the other team who had grand plans and only failed once a year. Each time they failed they learned something new, retooled and improved the aircraft, until they had this…

?They called the aircraft the Gossamer Condor after the bird Steve Jobs mentioned, the animal that moved most efficiently over the distance of one kilometre. If you look inside the aircraft you can see that there are pedals and handlebars, it’s kind of like a bicycle for the air.

Who is right about the computer? Jobs or Picasso? Are they amazing tools or useless? They are both. They only do the things we tell them to do, they make the same mistakes we do. Can a computer help you to solve a problem? Of course, because it can speed things up, so the question becomes how do you solve a problem? Make mistakes. We learn from our mistakes. Assume you don’t have perfect knowledge about the problem. Reduce the cost of making mistakes so you can make more of them. Use the power of computing to make mistakes faster. Don’t be reckless, of course. The rival teams could have crashed a plane several times a day by spending millions and millions of dollars on repairs. Remember the winning team looked first to solve the problem of, “how could you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours not months”.

You could read this analogy as support for good tools so you can release software as fast as you can, in part it is that, but don’t forget they made 223 airplanes in 6 months too. You need to balance tools, safety and products. Don’t focus on making the one true airplane, at the expense of making one test airplane. Don’t focus just on the capability for rapid airplanes, make airplanes rapidly too. Don’t forget that not just the airplane but the human needs to survive, but don’t make it so durable that the airplane doesn’t get in the air. Don’t forget to actually learn from the mistakes too, each attempt had an improvement, they didn’t just make the same mistake 222 times really quickly in a row. That last one is really important, less you count the number of times you do something as signs you are following this process. You have to learn, iterate and improve.

Work out how to make mistakes safely as fast as you can, and learn from them, and then you will really fly.

“I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts. And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

A bicycle for the mind! What an idea the computer is. Of course it’s all about what we do with them that’s really important. Not everyone loved the computer, Pablo Picasso had this to say,

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

I think both can be correct. The computer is the ultimate tool for the mind, it allows us to go faster and faster, but it can only give us back what we humans

Back to the plot… humans flying under their own power – Henry Kremer’s prize. The equivalent of $1.3m was a stake for the first person to win the prize and propel themselves over a figure of eight course. The prize was established in 1959 and over the next ten years dozens of teams tried, and tried and tried to solve the problem.

Then Paul Macready showed up...

… He arrived, looked at what people had been doing and said,

“The problem is, that we don’t understand the problem”

The average number of attempts per team to solve the problem was around once per year. Each team would come up with a new plan, build the plane, come to the airfield, test the plane, fail, come up with a new plan, and repeat the process.

Everyone thought progress was slow because this was such a hard problem! The problem wasn’t the problem, the problem was the process.

He decided to reframe the problem, how could you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours not months.

The first plane he tested failed, the second plane he tested failed, so did the third and the fourth. They failed by the original problem brief, they failed to be powered by a human to solo flight… but they succeeded in terms of the new problem brief… they could be fixed really quickly.

The 223rd flight was a success! They won the prize. The 223rd flight happened within 6 months of them first starting, they just kept iterating and iterating. They won, and in that time most of their competitors only had 1 attempt in the whole period of time they were working on the project. They won the prize within 6 months, the other teams had spent 10 years.

Fail fast is really, really important. Sometimes when people think about fail fast they think that means try human powered flight, and if that doesn’t work switch to something else. It CAN mean that, but it doesn’t always. Fail fast doesn’t mean don’t persist. They failed 222 times! That’s perseverance, incredible perseverance. You can imagine that in some ways it was more demoralising in the moment than the other team who had grand plans and only failed once a year. Each time they failed they learned something new, retooled and improved the aircraft, until they had this…

?They called the aircraft the Gossamer Condor after the bird Steve Jobs mentioned, the animal that moved most efficiently over the distance of one kilometre. If you look inside the aircraft you can see that there are pedals and handlebars, it’s kind of like a bicycle for the air.

Who is right about the computer? Jobs or Picasso? Are they amazing tools or useless? They are both. They only do the things we tell them to do, they make the same mistakes we do. Can a computer help you to solve a problem? Of course, because it can speed things up, so the question becomes how do you solve a problem? Make mistakes. We learn from our mistakes. Assume you don’t have perfect knowledge about the problem. Reduce the cost of making mistakes so you can make more of them. Use the power of computing to make mistakes faster. Don’t be reckless, of course. The rival teams could have crashed a plane several times a day by spending millions and millions of dollars on repairs. Remember the winning team looked first to solve the problem of, “how could you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours not months”.

You could read this analogy as support for good tools so you can release software as fast as you can, in part it is that, but don’t forget they made 223 airplanes in 6 months too. You need to balance tools, safety and products. Don’t focus on making the one true airplane, at the expense of making one test airplane. Don’t focus just on the capability for rapid airplanes, make airplanes rapidly too. Don’t forget that not just the airplane but the human needs to survive, but don’t make it so durable that the airplane doesn’t get in the air. Don’t forget to actually learn from the mistakes too, each attempt had an improvement, they didn’t just make the same mistake 222 times really quickly in a row. That last one is really important, less you count the number of times you do something as signs you are following this process. You have to learn, iterate and improve.

Work out how to make mistakes safely as fast as you can, and learn from them, and then you will really fly.