Leonardo

I saw an advertisement for a Leornardo Da Vinci exhibition at The Tech Museum. We spoke about all the amazing things that Leonardo did. I said that today, one had to specialize. A wanted to know why. I told him to imagine a large canvas in which a city had to be painted. The first person who starts painting on it can paint all over the canvas. But after 25 people join the process and fill most of the canvas, you would be limited to painting in a small section (wherever you could squeeze in). There would be little White space, so you would probably end up picking a detail and working on it. I also used the design of a car as an example: if someone worked exclusively on one componet, say the steering wheel, he would likely do a better job than someone who was designing an entire car, including a steering wheel, from scratch.

P & N thought Iron Man was smarter than Da Vinci. A argued for Da Vinci, because he built his inventions from scratch - rather than assemble them from existing components like Iron Man. N correctly guessed that Da Vinci was from Italy. Ciao.