Suppose you need to get from A to B and back. You need to do it often, you need to do it fast.
Your cargo - written notes which two kings (from A and B respectively) exchange between each other.
So you try to solve the problem by getting faster cars, building better roads, hiring the best drivers - all with the goal of getting the notes from king A to king B as fast as possible.
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The 'abstraction' which I think Alan is talking about is not about how to make the car go faster between A and B - it is about stepping back and actually thinking about the context - what do we actually need ? We need a way to transfer messages between A and B.
And pretty soon you come up with the idea of using a membrane to convert voice into electrical signals and send those over a wire.
So you install a cable between A and B and now the kings can chat all day long.
That's a much simpler and powerful solution, but not to the problems you were trying to solve (making the car go faster), but to the problem in the upper scope - sending messages from A to B.
So you try to solve the problem by getting faster cars, building better roads, hiring the best drivers - all with the goal of getting the notes from king A to king B as fast as possible.
---
The 'abstraction' which I think Alan is talking about is not about how to make the car go faster between A and B - it is about stepping back and actually thinking about the context - what do we actually need ? We need a way to transfer messages between A and B.
And pretty soon you come up with the idea of using a membrane to convert voice into electrical signals and send those over a wire. So you install a cable between A and B and now the kings can chat all day long.
That's a much simpler and powerful solution, but not to the problems you were trying to solve (making the car go faster), but to the problem in the upper scope - sending messages from A to B.
This was the gist of Alan's talk imho.