Greatness

Early in my career, an RMIT professor asked me which I should pursue of two choices - achievement or greatness. My answer was greatness, and he chastised me in a most eloquent way.

How appropriate for a man of age 52 to belittle a child of 19 on issues that he'd spent his career examining and lecturing on. Unfortunately my memory is better than his, and my current thinking allows me to respond to his shallow and morally-determined outlook on the path of the individual.

C, Cobol, VAX, TCP/IP, Cisco, Linux, C++, Java, .Net, Cray, Amdahl, The Art, Google, Microsoft

All of these companies, standards and languages have one simple thing in common - greatness.

A limited group of people was involved in each, and their names are synonymous with their creations and legacy. They are identified for their contribution to the world we live in and the communities they created.

Achievement is a very loose and qualitative term from one point of view. A couple's otherwise unremarkable child has "achieved" by getting the best score in the class on a mathematics test or appearing in the school play. As much as my writing will offend some, such outcomes have precisely zero impact on the limited and wider community in general.

In every single case I have cited, the persons involved aspired to something greater. None of them sought the outcomes of fame, recognition or authority - each had their own particular goals that they achieved.

There are many other groups that have aspired and have not been recognised, but there are examples of this that have given rise to better ideas, more concrete outcomes and further-reaching initiatives. The contributions of such individuals cannot be disregarded.

To the professor who shouted me down almost a decade ago: inferiority - what's it like?