Alexander Obenauer

My exploration into the operator environment for an OS of the future has been guided by need and intuition, but how I’ve reacted to those forces has evolved over time. If you’ll allow some naval-gazing, I’ll share some observations and reflections on process.

My present aim is to add to the corpus of ideas. Fundamentally, I believe the ideas we’re working with today aren’t very good. There’s a very high bar; we can only work on so many things. So I have this heavy bias towards divergence in my work. Diverge and diverge again.

In my independent work, I tend to work with my “big questions” on background, and my curiosity on foreground.

The big questions are the hard problems that, if solved, would be quite meaningful for the field and its contribution. But I work with curiosity on foreground. Often, the big questions are the ones that remain because hammering away at them directly hasn’t landed the needed answers. Letting curiosity take the reins puts some noise into the system. It’s Feynman’s spinning plates that ultimately won his Nobel. Curiosity has the ability to lead one to important discoveries on paths that otherwise seem insignificant. It finds both problems and ways of solving them. It surfaces the principles we hold close which stand in contrast to the things around us. Working with the big questions on background and the mind’s unfettered curiosity on foreground, I can help find new paths to new results.