(Yes, there is a 9,000-word Quora post on airplane cockpits.)
It used to be that a key ingredient in human knowledge was the suppression of human passion. From science's method to journalism's, people claimed authority by proving how little they were able to care about the knowledge they were creating. But that's changing, and quickly. Increasingly, it's passion itself -- messy, quirky, productive passion -- that is guiding what, and how, we know.
This is evidenced, most recently, by a question on Quora.
"What do all the controls in an airplane cockpit do?" asked a wonderer on the crowd-sourced Q&A site. "There appear to be dials, knobs, and switches almost everywhere -- what do they all do and why are there so many of them? Seem to be many more than what I would expect would be needed to fly the aircraft."
Tim Morgan read that question, and sent an answer.
"If you're talking about a commercial airliner," he replied, "then there's hundreds and hundreds. There are big, fat manuals describing what they all do. But, since you asked, buckle up."
He meant it. In response to the three-sentence Quora question, Morgan, a web developer and private pilot, proceeded to take Quora users -- and anyone else who happened to come across his post -- on an extended journey: through the mechanical workings of the airplane cockpit, through the intricate dance that takes place between pilot and plane, and, in general, through the small miracle of precision and power that makes us fragile little humans able to fly.