Paul Graham: Adoption Via Repetition

Paul Graham captures a crucial point in his essay, Being Popular:

So anyone who invents something new has to expect to keep repeating their message for years before people will start to get it. We wrote what was, as far as I know, the first web-server based application, and it took us years to get it through to people that it didn't have to be downloaded. It wasn't that they were stupid. They just had us tuned out.

The good news is, simple repetition solves the problem. All you have to do is keep telling your story, and eventually people will start to hear. It's not when people notice you're there that they pay attention; it's when they notice you're still there.

The rest of the essay is chock full of acquired wisdom, as well. I'm beginning to buy his implication that Lisp is due for a renaissance, perhaps helped along by his Arc project.

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