semioticrobotic.info

Bryan Behrenshausen's public notebook. Updated irregularly.

A year of robustness

I’m beginning to think my New Year’s resolution is simply going to be some reformulation or specification of the robustness principle, Postel’s Law, which in its original formulation, instructs us to:

Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

Seriously exhausted by an incredibly acrimonious election season, I’d hesitated to even consider anything buzzing with the kind of static electricity attached to words like “liberal” and “conservative.” But I believe I think this gives me a nice way of articulating the general sense that I need to be more interoperable than ever this year.

Ported out of its original context, the principle might afford the following guideposts for 2017:

• Act consistently, but be open to variance
• Aim for simplicity, but be comfortable with complexity
• Accept more, but demand less

Here’s to a robust year.

# January 2, 2017