Where’s Leonardo?

by wjw on November 24, 2011

Off crowdsourcing in Milan, of course.

Via boingboing, it’s an actual translated to-do list from Leonardo da Vinci.

It’s interesting that six of the ten items involving asking other people how to do stuff.  Leonardo was interested in inventions, not re-inventions.  If someone else had the answer, he went to that person.

Think of what he could have done if he’d been able to crowdsource properly, with the Internet.

As for me, what’s on my to-do list for this Thanksgiving holiday?

Eating a lot of turkey, I reckon.  For which I will not need to consult any experts.

Urban November 24, 2011 at 8:48 am

“Leonardo knows he doesn’t know everything.” That’s smart. But I also know he didn’t know everything: Lots of his drawings of machines are actually not possible to build as there are errors in the drawings or no space where the people or horses would fit in.

But more seriously: I’d like to see the original “list” as I have a feeling there isn’t any list as such and that this is several separate excerpts from a notebook.
Examples of what they could look like:
http://quovadisblog.com/2010/01/25/guest-post-leonardos-notebook/
http://www.creative-science.org.uk/leonardo1.html

John Appel November 25, 2011 at 3:36 am

“Leonardo knows he doesn’t know everything.”

This reminds me of the unofficial motto of St. John’s College in Annapolis (with a branch in Santa Fe): “In order to know how little you know, you have to know a lot.”

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