In my opinion, the problem with papers is different: that of high cognitive barrier to entry (they're too dense for casual reading, and tend to build on silent assumptions well known only in narrow circles of specialists), and number overload. That's extrapolated (sorry!) from my personal attitude and experience with them. For this part, maybe a kind of "pop-science" (i.e. popularization) articles could help, too. In fact, some of such do appear on HN occassionally (e.g. some data structure akin to bloom filters recently, from what I recall). But actually that's not exactly what I attempted to express in my comment above.
What I tried to talk about was the other (if related) often repeated lament: that youngsters "forget" (in reality, never did know for starters) and reinvent stuff that was common knowledge/tech not long ago. I see this as something else than papers: I assume papers were more of a "bleeding edge" at the time they were written, and not all of them did spread to become well known (not to mention commonly understood) even at their time. For me (a tech mid-age?), the first realization of the trend came with some recent stories (a year or two ago?) about "a new app" for "woohoo, communication between mobile phones over audio!" I.e. modems, reinvented (not to mention the irony of phones now being more digital than analog, though still modem-ing over radio waves at lowest level... but I digress...).
That's the thing I believe old masters (but also commoners, like me! or you, whichever category you find yourself in) could try to popularize, so it doesn't get forgotten. And that's what I found brilliant in the original article. Re-pollination of "age"-old ideas, once common and obvious, now forgotten because out of use. In a lightweight, easily consumable and approachable tale.
That's the way of a wise old sage, telling young ones some lightweight and amusing stories by the campfire, but secretly hiding in them the good stuff he knew, or that he learnt the hard way in his own time. Engaging, amazing, and playing on curiosity, for the benefit of the new ones; not complaining and deriding. Playing with how to make the young ones care; tricking them into caring. That takes more effort, true; but then it may become a good proof whether one really cares about this stuff being remembered.
[edit] By the way, thanks for writing down your argument, especially because it made me flesh out some of my vague thoughts better, and explore them further even for my own understanding.
Agreed, that is why I advocate so much better systems programming languages, as new generations should learn there were other options, even full OSes used for actual productive daily work, not just closed in some lab.
What I tried to talk about was the other (if related) often repeated lament: that youngsters "forget" (in reality, never did know for starters) and reinvent stuff that was common knowledge/tech not long ago. I see this as something else than papers: I assume papers were more of a "bleeding edge" at the time they were written, and not all of them did spread to become well known (not to mention commonly understood) even at their time. For me (a tech mid-age?), the first realization of the trend came with some recent stories (a year or two ago?) about "a new app" for "woohoo, communication between mobile phones over audio!" I.e. modems, reinvented (not to mention the irony of phones now being more digital than analog, though still modem-ing over radio waves at lowest level... but I digress...).
That's the thing I believe old masters (but also commoners, like me! or you, whichever category you find yourself in) could try to popularize, so it doesn't get forgotten. And that's what I found brilliant in the original article. Re-pollination of "age"-old ideas, once common and obvious, now forgotten because out of use. In a lightweight, easily consumable and approachable tale.
That's the way of a wise old sage, telling young ones some lightweight and amusing stories by the campfire, but secretly hiding in them the good stuff he knew, or that he learnt the hard way in his own time. Engaging, amazing, and playing on curiosity, for the benefit of the new ones; not complaining and deriding. Playing with how to make the young ones care; tricking them into caring. That takes more effort, true; but then it may become a good proof whether one really cares about this stuff being remembered.
[edit] By the way, thanks for writing down your argument, especially because it made me flesh out some of my vague thoughts better, and explore them further even for my own understanding.