Friends that I haven’t met yet

It is surprising to me how many times I have made an idea-related connection with another human being on Twitter, formed some sort of “friendship” with them online, and only much later have the chance to meet them in person.

I can think of a dozen or so people that I would consider friends which I first got to know this way… in some cases years passed between first knowing them and meeting them.

To me, this is interesting because conventional wisdom would say one of the following is true:

My experience is a lot of #2 and some #3. My experience of making new friends over Twitter before ever meeting them doesn’t fit into any of those three buckets. I find that exciting. (Yes, I realize that this only works for me because I live in the very center of the bay area tech scene, but by god I love it.)

Now, whenever I run across someone new on Twitter that is interesting or inspiring to me, I like to think of them as just another friend that I haven’t met yet.

 
104
Kudos
 
104
Kudos

Now read this

Some thoughts on organizational complexity

Thinking about complexity # Knowledge Representation is a central topic in the field of artificial intelligence. Research in this area tackles the challenge of mapping the external world into simplified, machine-readable models. Creating... Continue →