I just published (and deleted) a truly stupid post. Which is fine.
This blog is all about trying things out, challenging myself to explore and define new boundaries — that I don’t quite understand yet — as opposed to beginning (and then staying) within bounds.
Some of the best things are discovered by accident, and I wouldn’t want to miss out on them.
For example, a few days ago I was picking out random books and I accidentally found one about Henry Hudson.
I’d never heard of Hudson — or so I thought — until I flipped it over and read the back. Turns out this is the guy who lent his name to the Hudson River in New York, and Hudson Bay — and thus the Hudson Bay Company, HBC, The Bay.
Yes, he found the Hudson River for the Dutch (at the site of what is now New York City), and he found Hudson Bay for the British. For these accomplishments, Henry Hudson was seen as a total failure in his time.
Hudson’s backers weren’t looking for what he eventually found — nor even where they very interested after he found them. They wanted to find a route to “the Orient.” The expidition that took him all the way to (what is now) Albany NY was supposed to travel north of Russia, to China…
That obviously didn’t go as planned.
Nor did his expidition that took him into Hudson Bay, which was also supposed to reach China, although it did manage to set up one of history’s longest commercial dynasties. That expidition — and Hudson’s life — ended in mutinous disaster.
As we explore new ideas and new ways of doing things through the web, are we emulating Columbus and Hudson by “failing good”? Are we paying enough attention to the potentially positive accidents around us? Or are we more like Hudson’s financiers, who were disappointed that he never sailed over the North Pole?
