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This article concerns the Star Wars trilogy and its translation to the world that we live in.
Naturally, we anticipate that the term "trilogy" will shortly be obsolete. However, we also expect that the observations made here will apply to the rest of the Star Wars series.
The reason for this article is this: We obviously enjoy Star Wars, or Lightsaber wouldn't be part of the company name. In particular, certain attributes of the lightsaber seem particularly applicable to what drives the company. Furthermore, the current-day state of affairs in the computing world is full of analogies to Star Wars. Over time, we expect to draw some of these out. However, they obviously go beyond the computing world and find wide application elsewhere.
How we transfer some of the lessons from Star Wars to real life is part of what the company is about. Let it be said up front: the transfer has limits. We are talking about a vehicle of entertainment here, not a religious dogma. But as with many modern and ancient tales, the good ones seem to leave lessons which we find ways to apply to our everyday lives.
The theatrical release of Star Wars is now over 20 years old. Yet it doesn't seem to age. The physical celluloid may be getting old. (The Special Edition went through an interesting restoration process.) But the story and acting doesn't seem out of date. Nothing seems to date it to the period it came out of.
Some of this is because George Lucas deliberately tried to create a "used future," actually set in the past in another galaxy -- a society inevitably full of imperfections. But some of this is because certain critical Star Wars story elements are fundamentally timeless.
A pivotal scene from the first movie Star Wars (now subtitled "A New Hope") takes place between Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker at Ben's modest home.
In this scene, Ben gives Luke his first introduction to the ways of the Jedi.
LUKE: What is it?
BEN: Your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster. An elegant weapon for a more civilized time. For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the Empire.
In this brief passage are key elements which help set the theme for the Star Wars trilogy. An in-depth extraction yields the following: [AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a first draft analysis, and is likely to be refined in the near future. The Ben Kenobi quotation above comes from screenplay fourth draft rather than the movie. In the movie, he says "civilized age" rather than "civilized time."]
The lightsaber
The Jedi Knights
The Old Republic
The Empire
From elsewhere, we learn that that the Empire is the current political power of consequence, and that its darkness has prompted separate societies to come together as a Rebel Alliance.
We also learn that the Jedi are not always good; an element of corruption is capable of turning an incompletely trained Jedi to evil.
Given the above abtractions into good and evil, very little is required to translate them to the world we live in.
(In fact, one interesting trait of many good science fiction stories is the ability of the plot line to rise above its immediate setting and make application to our world. The gadgets and effects are then simply icing on a cake which has more fundamental connection to where we are.)
There are fundamental truths that the entire Star Wars trilogy builds on. For many fans, whether they realize it or not, what makes Star Wars so appealing is that these are truths they already know deep within them. Star Wars is simply a vehicle for given them expression.
And of course, the reasonable thing to do with one's life is to be an agent of good. Hence, there is no escape. If you choose good, you choose discipline and mastery. (We assume here that discipline, i.e., self-discipline, is required to become the master of some set of skills. Right? Life is hard. :-)
That leaves fans (us included) with the most challenge of all: determining what is the good that we will serve. From that flows the type of discipline we will impose on ourselves and the types of skills we intend to master.
To bring this to the company perspective of Lightsaber Computing, our set of skills revolves around computing systems.
To computer scientists, there is such a thing as "elegant software," and it often takes years of training to build or understand it. But we can really tell the difference between it and something which is "as clumsy or as random as a blaster." To ignore the discipline is to flirt with the dark side.
In fact, things have gotten to the point where a Rebel Alliance seems to be forming. (Momentous events took place in the computing world between late-1997 and mid-1998.)
In future pages, we hope to give you a glimpse into the world of elegant software, share some bits about the computing world's Rebel Alliance, and we might actually be able to tell you some modest bits about what Lightsaber Computing is doing.