It serves well to remember what inspires. I repeat here a paragraph from Ivan Sutherland followed by links to read the rest.

I, for one, am and will always remain a practicing technologist. When denied my minimum daily adult dose of technology, I get grouchy. I believe that technology is fun, especially when computers are involved, a sort of grand game or puzzle with ever so neat parts to fit together. I have turned down several lucrative administrative jobs because they would deny me that fun. If the technology you do isn't fun for you, you may wish to seek other employment. Without the fun, none of us would go on." ..Ivan Sutherland

Credits

I came to read this paragraph prompted by James Gosling's Weblog recommending to read his essay on Technology and Courage.

Here is the link to the PDF file titled: Technology and Courage

satya - Sat Aug 11 2012 12:27:32 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Couple of quick quotes from the article

Couple of quick quotes from the article

satya - Sat Aug 11 2012 12:29:11 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Risky stuff...

..to exhibit courage one must both perceive a risk and proceed in spite of it.

satya - Sat Aug 11 2012 12:30:37 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

To do creative technology requires courage...

I direct my remarks to young people who may soon discover for the first time that to do technology requires courage, and to my older colleagues who, like me, have languishing technical projects and reports that seem less important than today's urgent tasks.

I am going to talk about the courage required to do creative technical work, and because I have mainly my own experience to draw on, this will be an intensely personal talk, revealing of my own failures of courage.

satya - Sat Aug 11 2012 12:33:16 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Research carries a special risk of discouragement...

In research, we daily face the uncertainty of whether our chosen approach will succeed or fail. We steep ourselves in elusive, mysterious, and unnamed phenomena, and we struggle to unravel very complex puzzles, often making no visible progress for weeks or months, sometimes for years.