What a Lab Is For
hello world
I keep a lab because I need a place to try things before they harden into opinions.
Some of what ends up here comes from software work. Some from machines, machining, or hardware. Some from food, travel, or projects that don’t fit cleanly anywhere else. I don’t separate them much in practice, so I’m not separating them here.
One of the earliest things that stuck with me happened in 1989. I was in the Bond Hall Digital Lab when Bob Hayes asked if I could write a simple cross-talk program. Nothing fancy. Just enough to let two machines talk cleanly. He wanted it in Motorola assembly. Not because it was elegant, but because it was the only way to do it. After building the software he dropped a stack of SunOS manuals in front of me and said, “read.”
On the wall of Bob’s Digital Lab was a quote from John Perry Barlow:
“Cyberspace ... has a lot in common with the 19th century West. It is vast, unmapped, culturally and legally ambiguous, verbally terse ... hard to get around in, and up for grabs. Large institutions already claim to own the place, but most of the actual natives are solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of sociopathy.
It is, of course, a perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and new ideas about liberty.”
— John Perry Barlow, 1990
That felt true then. It still does.
Most of what I work on starts half-formed. It gets better by being built, stressed, and occasionally scrapped. Constraints do more teaching than planning ever does.
This is where I leave notes while that’s happening.
Not conclusions. Not announcements. Just what’s under the hands at the moment.
That’s the lab.