My Teachers
 
 
How They Taught Me
An Essay on Influence
Part Two of three
 

 

Kenneth E Boulding

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1974 - 1976.

Kenneth Boulding blended economics and social theory in a way that captivated me in the early 70s. His notion of the “Invisible Collage” was electrifying to me. From this idea and his work in general, the practibility of the netweork economy became clear to me. Out of this flowed the ValueWeb concept.

 

Significant concepts: Invisible Collage • Network Economy •

Recommended Works: The Meaning of the 20th Century

 

 

Loren Eiseley

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1971 - 1979.

Introduced me to the Earth and its history in a way I never saw before him.

I think that Eiseley was a manic depressive. He showed in his writing how to turn this into art. This made me think that what mood you are in does not block creativity, you have to use it - come from it - to make whatever creative expression is possible. Where you are becomes the starting point to create and go somewhere else.

 

Significant concepts:

Recommended Works: The Immense Journey

 

 

Mary Stewart

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1988 - 1998.

Mary Steward wrote the Arthur legends from the standpoint of Merlin.

In her rendering, Merlin was part teacher, part engineer, part diplomat and part magician of real power. It is a completely different accounting of this man that is, most likely a memory of what were, in fact, several historical figures. It also has a sense of reality to it - a wonderful sense of time and place.

The story is told (through three books) by Merlin himself as an old man reporting his life and times. I did not read the books until the early 90s but they impacted me in a number of ways.

If I could be like anybody I would like to be like Mary Steward’s Merlin.

 

Significant concepts:

Recommended Works:

 

 

Max Stormes

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1961 - 1964

Max taught me how to see color and what the Theater was all about. He helped me form my expectation. We created a design practice and learned all the mistakes you can make - together. I was timid about color until Max made me see how Nature really used it - a revelation!

 

Significant concepts:

Recommended Works:

 

 

Mortimer Adler

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1971 - 1979.

Link

 

Significant concepts: Syntopical Reading • syntopicon •

Recommended Works: How To read a Book

 

 

Norbert Weiner

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1964 - 1979 - ongoing.

Nobert Weiner woke me up to the discipline of cybernetics and systems.

Weiner was the kind of integrated, systems thinker I aspired to be - and, he inspired me to stay the course in a world that rewarded specialization.

If you looked at what was happening in the 1950s Nobert was there up to his elbows in the work.

 

Significant concepts: Feedback • Feedback of a “complex” kind •

Recommended Works: CyberneticsThe Human Use of Human Beings

 

 

RM Schindler

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1959 - 1961 - ongoing.

In many respects Schindler is the architect that I can, personally, relate most to.

There is only superficial overlap between our work although if I were back in his time, together, this may not have been so. I find his works wonderful, however, It is his attitude about architecture and its practice that I most admire.

Unfortunately, I never met him - I discovered his work, by accident, shortly after he died. When I did, in one afternoon - via a passionate owner - he taught me more about the client in the process than I had learned before or since from any source other than long experience.

 

Significant concepts:

Recommended Works:

 

 

Robert Anton Wilson

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1988 - 1992.

Anton Wilson is an outrageous man. He is my litmus test against ever taking any belief too seriously. Whenever I start to get too serious about beliefs, I read Wilson until he can’t get me mad. Then I am ready to go back and deal with the World.

 

Significant concepts:

Recommended Works: The New Inqusition

 

 

Robert Heilein

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1966 - 1979.

I never met Heilein - I just read his books. This started in the mid 60s and continued through the mid 80s. Heinlein was a master of asking interesting “what ifs” and then filling in the blanks. He “saw” entire aspects of today’s world over 50 years ahead of the time. He works are really fictional, dramatic treatises and exercises in problem solving.

He was clearly one of the most widely read individuals of his time. His body of knowledge was vast and his ability to weave to it together impressive. In ways that I cannot totally explain he liberalized my thinking - he gave me mental elasticity.

 

Significant concepts

Recommended Works: The Moon is a Harsh MistressTime Enough For LoveThe Past through Tomorrow

 

 

Stewart Brand

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1971 - 1979.

Steward Brand influenced me in the 70s - I did not meet him until the late 90s more than a quarter of a century later. To this day he delights me with his totally unique way of seeing everything. Stewart is a revolutionary and one of the most careful thinkers around.

His point of view and work in the Whole Earth Catalog opened my mind, at an important time, to a broader perspective than that dominated by a focus on architecture and building processes (more or less) alone. It was in my responding to Brand that I discovered that there was a greater generality in what I was thinking about then could be held by my own narrow profession. It was this that started my migration away from (only) design-build to what I am doing today. This is a vast influence if you think about it.

Stewart is a prime example of the ability to hold a core, for a long period of time, while being able to constantly move beyond the specifics and reinvent them. Because of this he is able to bring together many divergent viewpoints and seemingly conflicting agendas and derive value from them.

Stewart was also one of my first teachers who is younger than me - think about this a bit.

 

Significant concepts:

Recommended Works: The Whole Earth Catelog and ReviewThe Media LabHow Buildings LearnThe Clock of the Long Now

 

 

TH White

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1976 - 1979.

 

Significant concepts:

Recommended Works: The Once and Future KingThe Book of Merlyn

 

 

Tom Richards

 

 

Peak period of influence: 1945 - 1958 - ongoing.

Tom Richards was my Grandfather. He had a profound influence on me - so great, that I did not realize the extent of it until in the last few years. This has dawned on me slowly... As I look in the mirror, today, I see my Grandfather emerging. I am about the age, now, that he was when I met him in 1945.

Grandfather and Grandmother came to stay with us awhile, in Orlando, after he retired at the end of WW II. I had met my Grandmother, before, and stayed with her at for periods when my parents were relocating. My Grandfather was always away, on assignment, until his retirement. When I did finally meet my Grandfather, I adored him. He seemed to me to be everything a man should and could be.

In his early 60s he was still physically vigorous and magnetic. A powerful man with an Irish temper and a keen intellect. He made things. He solved problems. You could hand Grandfather a basket full of parts and he would lay them out on a table and stare at them as he puffed his pipe - then, he would assemble them into working form in a matter of minutes. If there were missing or broken parts he would improvise and make new ones. Whatever, it always worked.

Myth followed Tom Richards like a mantel - I grew up within this myth before I ever met the man. When I did, I found that he exceeded his reputation. He stepped into my like larger than life - the typical crusty, always resourceful master sergeant made popular in so many war movies. Here was John Wayne in the flesh: opinionated, direct, charismatic, immensely strong, with total disdain for hierarchy and organization, compelled to action and ready to fight at the drop of a hat. No one, including generals, messed with this man.

It was whispered that he killed a man with one blow, before the war, who had accosted a woman in a public place. The Judge recommended and the Army transferred him to another base. They did.

There were many stories about Grandfather and will recount just two. The form the essence of his myth and my “imprinting.”

(insert stories)

Whenever my Grandfather got together, in the years that followed, we made things - much to the annoyance of the rest of the family. We were always putting something together. Grandfather ran a golf driving range as one of his many retirement jobs. There were thousands of golf balls to pick up, clean and paint strips of various colors on. After a few months we had an amazing amount of this process automated. This is where I first learned the virtue of systematic and constant improvement. Grandfather brought the same focus and intensity to this project that he did to keeping airplanes flying during WWII.

Grandfather “instructed” me in one other way - a sad way. From this experience I made a decision that plays large in my life to this day. The instruction is in how he died. To understand, you have to know why he retired. He had entered service under age, with no education. He literally grew up with the Air Force. Before the War he was asked to take a commission but turned it down. In those days pay was heavily based on years of service and this would have meant a reduction. Additionally, he was a very senior NCO - to become an Officer would be to start over in another chain of command. After the War he was asked again, and having no family to raise, he accepted. Also, by this time the pay process had greatly changed.

In the required physical exam it was discovered that he had a heart condition. Instead of promotion he was retired. He was told that he was going to die. The Air Force was right - he died nearly 20 years later to the day.

Retirement was not happy for my Grandfather. He did odd jobs, mostly running places, sometimes as an inspector in aircraft factories but nothing that had the focus and importance of the lifetime of work he had invested in the Air Force.

He died a very slow death.

I have often wondered what the Air Force lost with that decision - I know what Grandfather lost. I decided, before I ever went to work, that this would never happen to me.

Grandfather was not an intellectual. My mother was and from her I inherited those traits. From Grandfather, I got my grounding in physical reality. My desire to build, my intensity to act. From him I got my physical nature and a fair measure of my zest for adventure and disdain for those things that stand in the way of getting things done.

He sparked my sense of life.

 

Significant concepts: “Peanut sittin on a railroad track his heart was in a flutter, long came a railroad train - toot, toot peanut butter!” •

Recommended Works: Everything the U.S. Air Force flew from the beginning of WWI to the end of WWII.

 

GoTo: part 3 of 3 • ReturnTo: part 1

 

Matt Taylor
Palo Alto
March 3, 1999

 

SolutionBox voice of this document:
VISION • STRATEGY • EVALUATION

 

 


posted March 3, 1999

revised March 14, 2002
•19991031.41058.mt • 20000129.124930.mt • 20000131.132255.mt •
• 20000310.191142.mt • 20000715.54458.mt • 20010105.123498.mt •
• 20020313.298843.mt • 20020314.266550.mt •

(note: this document is about 60% finished)


copyright© Matt Taylor 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002

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