Month: February 2003

I wrote earlier about Personas and Personality. A recent post on slashdot mentions techie personality types and claims that most developers and tech people have personality types that make up roughly 12% of the population. The author of the post writes:

When you study the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) for techies you find that they are made up almost entirely of 4 types INTP, INTJ, ISTP, and ISTJ. nearly all the core software that runs the Internet was written by INTP and INTJ people. (In general INTs are more likely to like python or lisp while ISTs are more likely to like Perl.) NTs are concept oriented with STs are detail oriented.

INT*s make up about 2% of the population and IST*s make up about 10% of the population. The key is the IT in the type. “I” stands for Introverted and “T” stands for Thinking. The ITs make up only 12% of the population.…

The result is that the people writing the code have a point of view that is shared by only a small minority of the population. While the largest subgroup of the population has a point of view that is exactly opposite of the techies.

Good personality types for personas would then be ones that are more heavily represented in the general (non-tech) population. One could even assume that the “techie” types are already reasonably represented and may actually be the personality type of UI designer.

Wow! I just found the High Bridge Collection, provided online by the University of Kentucky Libraries, Special Collections and Archives. The collection contains seven photos of the High Bridge railroad bridge during its construction in 1876-1877.

Another collection provided by the same library, the Nollau High Bridge Photographic Collection, claims to contain sixty photographs of the rebuilding of the bridge in 1910-1911. Based on the distinctive towers and appearance, I’d say that only pictures 33 through 60 are of High Bridge, Kentucky. I remember reading that they rebuilt High Bridge around the original bridge, using the same footings, with no disruption of railroad traffic, and raised the track almost 30 feet. These photos make it obvious how it was achieved.

You may also want to look at the related collections—Louis Edward Nollau took photos all over Kentucky. I found many interesting Kentucky historical sites, including a picture of the High Bridge railroad station and a number depicting the building of the new bridge approach embankment (see photos 8 through 20).