Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The ever decreasing cost of technology enables more people to look at more of our problems. There is hope.

Linus’ Law is disputed as to what it is and who said it and who published it and all those things that come with a quote that is often quoted and misquoted.

I’ll continue the confusion by paraphrasing it:

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs (problems) are shallow (solvable).

Someone out there knows the answer or knows a different approach that makes the answer available with a little (not a lot of) work.

Some technical “availables” include:

• the ever less expensive computer
• the ever less expensive health monitor
• the ever less expensive microscope
• the ever less expensive telescope
• the ever less expensive pencil and paper
• the ever less expensive blog platform
• and we can go on for quite a while

All these things put more eyeballs on more problems. Perhaps the cure for cancer is coming from an unexpected (unfunded) source in an unexpected place. Wouldn’t it be great if a 13-year-old in Tibet raised her hand with the answer?

So, give that person a second-hand $100 Chromebook and show them how to get a one-month, free-trial of a cloud computing platform. Stand back in wonder.