In-jokes That Only Smart People Will Get

Lego My Ego

I love Legos. They are like Dick and Jane readers¹ for engineers. Each set comes complete with its own set of blueprints which, assuming you follow in the prescribed manner, virtually guarantees the successful completion of a construction project and a warm sense of satisfaction. "I built that." The message here is a fairly simple one. "Trust us. Do what we tell you, and things will work out."

It's not a bad message, really. In fact, with so much else in a state of flux and ambiguity, it can be a very comforting one. Especially for a child. "Here is something you can control."

But it doesn't end there. It begins. You see, these unassuming procedural instructions are not just conveying a rote methodology to achieve a given end, they are also doing something much more complex. They are defining a system.

Systems are collections of components that work together to achieve a given end. It is not unreasonable to interpret each Lego brick as a piece in a larger system. Each brick serves a specific purpose important to the proper completion of an end product—the model from the blueprints.

This is more significant than it may appear at first. While assembling a project, we are shown only how a piece is relevant to the current model and its relationship to other pieces within that project. What we are not shown are the applications that lie outside the bounds of the current context. We don't need to be. These we intuit.

That is part of the genius of Legos. By showing us a particular, in a singular context, we generalize its use to similar scenarios. Consequently, if we run short on a particular piece, we are often content to substitute one or more pieces to serve an equivalent function—at least during the prototyping process. I generally try to scrounge the pieces needed for the final design.

So here we have a document that on its face instructs you how the individual pieces relate to one another and work in conjunction with each other. But more than that, they give you enough data points to "connect the dots" and leap beyond what is stated explicitly and make use of what is only implied.

We are about to take a turn for the subversive. You see, Legos do other things. They encourage you to take things apart, to reorder pieces and to try to improve the design. It is a corollary of sorts to what we have already observed—that combining multiple pieces can often substitute for a specific piece.

Sometimes when we take things apart, we find things we were not looking for. That is exactly what happened at Hilltop Children's Center. That is why they banned Legos.

Since Legos themselves model physical systems, they also serve as a conduit to exam theoretical systems. By their nature, Legos have a knack for laying bare hidden assumptions that may escape notice in a cursory examination. This is not always a comfortable experience. The pieces you find can be different from the pieces you thought you had.

But that is why I love Legos.

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¹This is not entirely fair. The educational benefit of Dick and Jane readers is suspect at best. I do not believe that is the case with Legos.