The dumbing down effect of the internet

Ever since the rise of the internet from the early 90s as the most profound new medium for information exchange, much has been touted on the benefits for human beings, such as it being a more efficient means of communications, the democratization of ideas, having all the information at one's fingertips, etc... all true, yet like all things in life, you can have too much of a good thing. A couple of articles I just read seem to confirm this.

One was from the Economist, titled "Great minds think (too) much alike" which argues that the abundance and ease with which scientist can acquire scientific papers and journals, has in fact, narrowed or "dumbed down" to put it bluntly scientific research and knowledge:

Why this should be so remains unclear. It does not seem to have anything to do with economics. The same effect applied whether or not a journal had to be paid for. One explanation could be that indexing works by titles and authors alone, as happened with printed journals, forced readers to cast at least a cursory glance at work not immediately related to their own—or even that the mere act of flicking through a paper volume may have thrown up unexpected gems. This may have led people to make broader comparisons and to integrate more past results into their research.

It is not yet clear whether this change is for good or ill. Electronic searching means that no relevant paper is likely to go unread, but narrowing the definition of “relevance” risks reducing the cross-fertilisation of ideas that sometimes leads to big, unexpected advances. As a wag once put it, an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until, eventually, he knows everything about nothing. It would be ironic if that is the sort of expertise that the world wide web is creating.

I think the over specialization of knowledge in the scientific areas has been a trend and concern well before the advent of the internet phenomenon, and it goes beyond the sciences, as this was one of the main reasons I choose not to pursue a doctorate in Philosophy after graduating college, but the ubiquity and efficiency of data via the net, is accelerating this narrowing of knowledge.

Nicholas Carr, a well known business and technology writer infamous for proclaiming that the IT department was dead, yet again boldly states that it is due to the efficiencies of search engines like Google that is making us stupid:

For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Carr is arguing that not only has the internet caused a change in the way we access information, but that it is also effecting and shaping our thought process. There is some merit to this, as the scientific studies I have read and the one he cites in his article does show how new technological mediums change both at the individual psychological level as well as culturally the way we think and the influences thereof. On an anecdotal note, I do see the younger generation being extremely distracted with ever shortening attention spans and what I like to refer to as the "Twitter Crowd". It has gotten to the point where companies now are hiring consultants to learn how to manage these Millennials.

Nevertheless, with every new technological breakthrough, there are always those who want to warn us of the impending doom to humankind such technologies create, and even Carr acknowledges that "those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct", but I do think it is imperative to be mindful of the conclusion of his article, "as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence".

That's basically the key dealing with all this new deluge of information that we are now bombarded with, is that you need to put more of an effort to manage this information, or get managed by it!

The banalities of the creative generalist

I discovered this pretty interesting blog posting about the notion of being a creative generalist. He describes the notion that:

Nothing can substitute for depth of analysis, and there's proven value in specialization – it's what education, career paths, scientific research, and technological innovation are built on – but generalism is a secret talent. With so much complex information, fragmented in so many ways and developing faster and faster, it is increasingly important to have generalists around to make sense of it all, of the big picture. People who appreciate diversity, who are in the know about the wider world and who understand how things interact are invaluable observers, matchmakers, and pioneers of the intersectional ideas so vital for success in today’s knowledge economy, conceptual age, and global community.

But what exactly do generalists do? That’s the question most often asked of me and it’s not an easy one to answer. By definition, generalists tend not to focus (actually, they do focus but just not to the extent that specialists do), they don’t often travel in groups (lacking common associations, designations, and unions), and their shape-shifting versatility changes them frequently. But they are definable and there most certainly are essential traits and skills inherent to them.

It's a pretty long post, that's peppered with anecdotes and quotes from famous writers, thinkers, and business people both past and contemporary who have been known to exemplify broad generalist thinking that was done in a very creative manner. One particularly good example, was the inclusion of the writer Frans Johansson, who is the author of the famous book Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation.

A great example from the book, was the French telecom engineer whose passion for entomology led to close observation of ants that suggested algorithms now widely used to route traffic around the Internet. This is certainly a prime example of creative, generalist epiphany at its finest. Though while I'm a believer and a strong advocate for adopting a creative generalist approach to solving business, as well as any problem, I feel there is the danger inherent to this type of thinking and that is if it is pursued unchecked and irrationally, it succumbs to triteness and banalities. Even worse, it can lead to sloppy thinking.

Here's my rationale:

1. The majority of people still do not adopt proper analytical and logical skills to problems. Its no secret that this country suffers from a lack of scientists and engineers, and is why so much of these functions are imported in from other countries or outsourced. But underlying this problems is not such much a shortage of technical skills and education, as bad as that has gotten, but really is a lack on educational institutions teaching of how to think critically, analytically and logically not only in science and technology, but in other disciplines as well. Having people adopt a more holistic, generalist view without proper rigorous analysis is dangerous. In addition, the whole idea of "creativity" if not defined properly become merely intellectual fluff.
2. Like those infamous "team-building" exercises that have become popular in corporate America, where you have employees engage in goofy exercises with each other, in order to spark creativity and teamwork that has now become a source of dread for most employees, the same could happen if you try to artificially induce creative generalist thinking. The example of the French telecom engineer from Johansson's book was no doubt a combination of years of study and passionate pursuit of different fields of study, that converged at some serendipitous point and lead that engineer to his extraordinary discovery. I think if you try to hard to artificially induce such discoveries, you run into the problems of making the process banal and even drudgery much like the team building exercises. Google is a prime example recently of company known for having a creative work environment, yet despite this has had an exodus of key employees recently due to boredom.
   
3. Again, like the example of the French telecom engineer just mentioned, it seems we get enthralled by what seems to be a spontaneous spark of creative genius that leads to such incredible discoveries, and forgot that many such individuals got to that point from years of research and study, and probably toiled for years with painful detail to data and analysis. Like Edison said, its "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" and I think its important to emphasize the hard work, dedication and attention to details it takes to achieve such insights as well as being more creative and holistic in your thinking.

Nevertheless, the blog was an excellent read and I recommend the site and thought I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments and pursuit of being a creative generalists, I do so with the above caveats in mind. I actually go further then the author and believe that in order to compete in today's competitive and intense global world, that you have to have subject matter expertise in a few areas AND the ability to generalize and think creatively through problems.

Robert Reich's Confirmation of the "Inverted Bell Cuve"

I just came across this interesting blog entry from Robert Reich, who was always my most favorite cabinet member of former president Bill Clinton. In the post, he seems to confirm what I had posted about a while ago about the declining middle class causing an Inverted Bell Curve, for he writes:

According to new polls, the economy is the number 1 issue for American voters. But that's not just because the economy is slowing and mortgages are harder to come by. The real reason is middle-class families have exhausted the coping mechanisms they've used for over three decades to get by on median wages that are barely higher than they were in 1970, adjusted for inflation. Male wages today are actually lower than they were then; the income of a young man in his 30s is now 12 percent below that of a man his age three decades ago...

The fact is, most Americans are still not prospering in the high-tech, global economy that emerged three decades ago. Almost all the benefits of economic growth since then have gone to a relatively small number of people at the very top.

Funny how we kept talking about how the information super highway and blossoming high-tech industries were going to increase worker productivity, which increased productivity so much in fact, that it seems to have put them right out of work!

It has been quite some time since America has undergone a major revolution, and by that I mean such events such as gaining independence from England during the 18th century, the emancipation of African-American slaves, or the expansive social reforms instituted by FDR during the Great Depression, but as more and more of the middle class gets squeezed out and the curve keeps dipping downward, it will sling back up very hard before breaking and that's when a revolution can occur. It always seems to work that way.

The Paradox of Personal Branding

I just found this interesting blog about "Personal Branding" from a techie named Jeff Atwood ironically. I say ironically because most techies are not known for wanting to market and hype anything, let alone themselves. But in this competitive "look at me" generation where anyone can now publicly display themselves for the whole world to see, with the most gratuitous examples being celebrities such as Paris Hilton and the like getting an inordinate amount of media attention for being nothing but vapid celebrities gone bad, it has become very hard and almost imperative to distinguish yourself from the pack. Hell, isn't that what I'm doing now?

I do though love the fictional dialog in the blog used as an example of the process:

Jack meets Janet and they start talking. Jack explains who he is and what he does for a living and Janet does the same. While Jack is speaking, Janet is very busy trying to "box" Jack.

She's looking for some tag-- "software engineer", "technical architect", "project manager"-- something that will make it easy for her to remember. Of course, Jack is doing the same thing. It's a "boxing" contest.

There's nothing wrong with this approach. We all do it. Here's why: When Janet finishes her meeting with Jack and later meets an old friend Paul, Janet needs an easy way to explain who she met. She'll say, "I met Jack for coffee and he's a software engineer" rather than repeating the whole spiel she just heard from Jack.

There is hope, though. If Jack made a compelling introduction, something memorable and remarkable, Janet would be compelled to say a few more words about Jack. Jack won the "boxing" game.

This requires more than communication skills. You need to be working on something that is remarkable or be remarkable yourself. In other words, you need to be working on your “personal brand.”

Indeed, as the author states, being technically great at your job only keeps your head above water and you need to pursue avenues beyond just your normal career if you want to excel and be remarkable.

The ones he advocates pursuing such as:

• lead a user group
• create a popular open-source project
• write a blog
• publish a book
• publish articles
• speak at conferences

are things I'm actively pursing as well. I guess the question then becomes, what if everyone starts to pursue these things too? Won't it dilute the competitive personal advantage one gains, since everyone else is doing the same? Well then you will have to do something more remarkable to stand out from this crowd. And I have noticed more professionals pursing these pursuits, since the cost and barriers to entry by way of blogs, podcasts, user groups, YouTube videocasts, etc. have made it easier for everyone.

But I think the reality is that though it may be easier technologically, we are basically all under the same constraint of time and also the fact that most people will not want to put forth the effort. Also, not everyone is a natural sales person and may not be inclined to pursue self promotion.

But no doubt the world has changes and the pace is much faster and it is harder to distinguish yourself from the crowd. Paradoxically, the technological tools have made it easier, but has also increased the noise and you now have to shout much louder to be noticed.

Marc Andreessen's Career Opinions

Marc Andreessen the very famous co-founder of Netscape, has written a series of insightful blogs on career planning:

1. Part 0: Introduction
2. Part 1: Opportunities
3. Part 2: Skills and Education
4. Part 3: Where to Go and Why

I especially like how the disclaimer on the introduction blog states right off the bat, that "these posts are aimed at high-potential people who want to excel throughout their careers and make a significant impact on their fields and the world. These posts are not appropriate for people for whom work/life balance is a high priority or for whom lifestyle is particularly important". In other words, the advice is geared towards highly ambitious, work-a-holic types looking to not only make billions, but to change the world!

Given Marc's history and impact he has had on the world through founding one of the most important and used products of the century, the web browser, it lends a lot of legitimacy to what he advocates.

There are a multitude of career help books espousing the politically correct notion of how important it is to balance work and personal life, but the reality is that if you have high ambitions, forget about it, you will need to make considerable sacrifices. But I believe that if you have a genuine passion and desire to be the best at what you do, which is typically some kind of career, given that all of us need to earn a living to keep food on the table and a roof over our head unless what you have a passion for is purely a hobby, then it really shouldn't feel like sacrifices but simply things you have to do to achieve your goals.

But on this notion of following your passions, which Marc advocates throughout, he contradicts himself and it is a point I'm in complete disagreement with him about, and that is in Part 2 where he states:

Some people argue that college will be your one chance in life to pursue your passion -- to spend four years doing nothing but studying whatever you love the most, whether that's Renaissance literature or existential philosophy.

I disagree.

If you intend to have an impact on the world, the faster you start developing concrete skills that will be useful in the real world, the better -- and your undergrad degree is a great place to start. Once you get into the real world and you're primed for success, then you can pursue your passion.

A typical liberal arts degree will be almost useless on its own. So you usually won't have the option of immediately entering the workforce in a high-impact way when you graduate, and you'll have to go get a useful graduate degree.

First, if it is your burning desire to become a hot shot entrepreneur, then I think going to college will be a waste of time. The reality is that colleges and universities are really nothing but an extension of high school with more challenging (though this is subject to debate at a lot of colleges, even the elite ones) classes, where students who are considered too young to join the corporate world stew for a while and prove that they can slog it out 4 more years proving they have the necessary stamina to do pencil pushing (or keyboard typing) white collar work. In addition, there is still that prestige factor of getting a college degree felt by both parents and students.

It's no accident that some of the greatest entrepreneurs (Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Richard Brandson, etc.) were either college drop outs or did not bother to attend at all. You could argue that getting a college degree will give you an advantage when entering the work force, and while this is true on average, a true entrepreneur with a burning passion to make it big would not need such a temporary advantage (I say "temporary" because after a few years in the workforce, the college degree becomes moot, and one's real world experience is what counts). Furthermore, overcoming the advantage your peers have with a college degree is something a true, determined entrepreneur would welcome overcoming anyway.

Second, if your going to go to college, then in my opinion, getting the broadest education you can is best, because the reality of the new world is that a student will be changing their careers multiple times and being able to learn new skills quickly will be an important asset. Having a broad educational foundation is best, and it should be on the fundamentals: critical reading, thinking, writing, mathematics, and science. But the bottom line, is to completely disregard Marc's recommendation to pursue classes that "have a technical element of some form -- that teach you how to do something substantive", unless that is what you want to do, and pursue whatever you find interesting and make sure it and you employ the fundamentals to your full advantage.

You can pursue something as esoteric as art history, and so long as you are motivated to use your creativity, logic, and analysis and be able to articulate this well in writing and speaking, then this will help you in whatever career choice you pursue. Anyway, a popular notion and one in which I fully agree, is the notion that creative right brain functions are just as, if not possibly more important than the typical analytical left brain functions in the new world. This was well articulated in Daniel Pink's book "A Whole New Mind" and is a book I highly recommend.

Finally, in our highly competitive and fast paced world, you have to acquire the discipline to constantly learn new things. It will make you a more productive person, and in addition will make you a better human being all around. If you can learn to acquire a genuine passion for learning just to satisfy your curiosity and to explore your mind and intellect, then you will be able do this without it feeling like a chore. It is this acquired ability that has allowed some of the most influential people in our history, to change the world.

The Inverted Bell Cuve

I was directed to his WSJ article by Daniel Pink, wherein the increasing decline of the middle class is causing the once bell shaped curve these workers occupied in a typical statistical sample, to become inverted. The graph below from the WSJ article seem to indicate this phenomenon quite well:




Much has been made about the threat of globalization, outsourcing, and the automation of many intellectual as well as manual labor tasks, and it seem from the above graph that this notion is truly causing a shift in class structure. This is not good news for people like recent college graduates, data entry clerks, call center support employees, etc., but will make the people who occupy the higher level positions even richer, and ironically, the people on the lower who service them richer as well. These are indeed some interesting times we live in.

The Hedgehog vs the Fox

In a famous essay by Isaiah Berlin titled "The Hedgehog and the Fox", he takes the famous Greek notion that "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Basically, it is a metaphor for the kind of person who is a generalist (Fox) or specialist (Hedgehog).

In the professional business world, this difference is typically seem in the roles of executive/manager who typically has to be more of a generalist, verses a technician/engineer who are typically specialists. That is not to say an executive cannot be a specialist, as a good example would be a CFO that has a very focuses and specialized expertise in the finance and accounting of a company she/he is running. Likewise, there are high level software architects that have a very broad and generalized knowledge of many technical areas such as object oriented design, operating system architecture, database models, etc.

In a blog by Timothy Ferriss, of the "4 Hour Work Week" fame, he argues that being a generalist or "Jack-of-all-trades" is the way to go. He cites 5 reasons for his postition, and with the exception of his statement that "based on my experience and research, it is possible to become world-class in almost any skill within one year", which I find questionable, I have to agree with it overall.

Highly technical people in my experience, for example, do seem to pursue technical purity and perfection at the expense of getting whatever it is they are engineering done in consideration of usability, functionality and most importantly, within the strategic alignment and business goals for which the product is being developed in the first place. This probably accounts for why so many high-tech projects fail, are abandoned or have usability issues.

But why hold the belief that you can only be one or the other? I would rather take the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" to "Jack of all trades, master of a FEW". We are finite beings with a finite limit of time, resources and abilities, thus I think the most optimal way would be to work hard at being the best at some particular field, then having a broad enough mindset and general knowledge base to take that success and parlaying it into achieving a high level of success in another field.

This way, you get to experience and achieve success and expertise in a few diverse fields, while also expanding your experience, knowledge and skill sets. This seems to be the best of both possible worlds.

Arnold Schwarzenegger vs Timothy Ferriss

I read the following two books in succession, and much to my amazement, both had very similar themes and though Arnold is older then Timothy Ferriss, they both published their text around the same age and both had best sellers with their first published books. Below I cite a review I wrote on Amazon for both texts:







I happened to decide to read some self-help type books because like everyone else, I hit a stagnating point in my career and wanted to read about how some of these purportedly self-made successful authors achieved success in life. By some strange coincidence, I read Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder" then TimothyFerriss's "The 4-Hour Workweek" in succession, and though these two authors may seem an anachronism, the similarities of their central message, namely, how they were able to achieve their dream lifestyle are exactly the same. Only the techniques and philosophical underpinnings differ.

Timothy Ferriss and 4WW as already reviewed on this page, advocates much of the platitudes written by other self-help authors such as life is short, do not spend every day in a job you hate to buy things you do not need, follow the Pareto 80/20 principle, etc. Of course the most interesting aspect is the notion of outsourcing the repetitive, low level work in your own business pursuits much like the big corporations are doing now to maximize your free time to pursue the things you enjoy, like the "mini-retirements" Ferriss takes regularly to all the exotic places that we all enviously wish we could do. I think this is really the core of the book and is why the book achieved such popularity in such a short time. The world has truly become flat, and the threats and discordance of an increasingly globalized world and outsourced workforce underlies all of us who occupy the once exalted white-collar job. Ferriss masterfully targets this underlying fear and concern, by turning it around and telling the Reader that you can fight back by doing the same think the big companies are doing to you, by utilizing the same technologies and outsourcing techniques, such that eventually you'll be able to kick back in a hammock with a drink in you hand, and in the other a laptop or cell phone with wireless Internet access to run your outsourced business in some exotic location like Tahiti or something, that the book cover depicts so well.

On Arnold, what can I say that has not already been written and talked about the man? To me and many others, he is the very embodiment and walking, living example of what all the self-help books advocate especially on topics like setting goals and visualizations. In the auto-biographical book, Arnold talks about how when he was 15 years old, he came upon bodybuilding and realized that "my life, the answer I'd been seeking. It clicked. It was something I suddenly just seemed to reach out and find, as if I'd been crossing a suspended bridge and finally stepped off onto solid ground." The first half of the book describes the single-minded determination, persistence and hard work he subjected himself to, to achieve his goal of becoming the greatest bodybuilder of all time, then parlaying that success as the foundation to achieve his other goals of becoming a successful businessman, actor and leader. It chronicles his life and achievements from the age of 15 to about 22 when he won the greatest bodybuilding competition, the Mr. Olympia for the first time. Reading this section really allows you to get a first hand account of the mindset Arnold had to achieve the great levels of success he was able to achieve and is eye-opening and invaluable. The second half describes exercises and diets you can do to achieve your own physical goals. While this section may be dated by recent advances in knowledge about strength training, and be biased to people like Arnold with great genetic, physical, nutritional and drug enhanced abilities, you can still benefit from his advices about regularity, dedication and sustained efforts required to obtain that six-pack ab, muscular biceps and of course good health.

Now, what I found so uncanny was the similarities of both authors, in that Ferriss is 29, and found great success in running a business in an innovated way, and used that success to write a best selling book on his first try. Likewise, Arnold was around 29 when he wrote and published his book, and used his great physical presence and huge success in a relatively unknown and marginalized sport of professional bodybuilding to publish a best selling book on his first try. Also, both men are savvy marketers and self-promoters and used those abilities shamelessly to catapult their first time published books to best seller status on their first try. Ferris from what I've read on his blog, used exactly that, his blog and Internet presence to build an audience long before the book was published and also by ensuring he got connected to other best selling authors and learning from them and using their connections to make sure his book would get published and read by a large audience. In another biography I read on Arnold, when the publishers of his book told him he would need to go a 10 city book tour, his response was "why only 10 cities, why not 50 cites", because he understood that to get his book sold and read by a large audience he had to get the word out.

But where the similarities end, the differences are quite pronounced. Though I do admire Ferriss and his marketing savvy, and his ability to articulate his agenda in an intelligent, if somewhat shallow way, I can't help but a feeling that his methods do not have long term viability. In addition, somewhat like Arnold, he's big on his athletic achievements but many seem exaggerated, and many if from what I've read online are unsubstantiated. Arnold, on the other hand, does not need to exaggerate anything, as he won the greatest bodybuilding championship 7 times, was at one time the highest paid actor, has made millions not only from acting, but owning real estate, a publishing company, restaurants and even leases a 747 airplane to southeast Asian countries, and is now governor of California, America's largest economy. His success and track record are for real, and when you read in his book about the psychological attitude he utilized such as goal setting and visualization and the use of good old fashion hard work, determination and perseverance, he never advocates a get quick success scheme.

In all fairness to Ferriss, he understands well the need for a catchy title and book cover and the frustrations of all the corporate cogs stuck in their Dilbertesque cubicles and to bank on their frustrations of now only working a dull and frustration job for long hours, but having that very job be outsourced to another country! And despite the ease with which he makes it all sound, there was much planning, strategic surveying, and persistent hard work to get his book and the image surrounding it to sell as well as it has. I think if anything, you can learn a great deal from how he got to where he is, and is in fact the very kind of traits Arnold talks about in his book that lead him to his success.

Not to berate the general attitude of this great country, but I think America has too much of a mentality of quick fixes and gains. Don't like your physical appearance, just to do plastic surgery or suck the fat out with liposuction. Likewise, all the get rich schemes too many to mention that permeate our national psyche. Reading how an immigrant like Arnold Schwarzenegger achieve his success with a positive attitude, gold old fashion hard work, determination, persistence, setting objective and attainable goals resonates with me much more deeply, especially since my parents are in his same age range and immigrated to this country with nothing and achieved success using his principles.

In conclusion, while I find Ferriss's book a bit gimmicky and shallow in details of how he achieved his lifestyle, it is still a worthwhile read and though many could claim much of his advice is common sense, if we all lived life utilizing true common sense intelligence, wouldn't we be all successful? Arnold's suggestions are to set clear and objective goals, visual yourself achieving success, and working hard everyday to achieve your vision. What could be more common sense?

Both books are worthwhile reads, but if you had to choose one, I'd pick Arnold's any day. His successful record speaks for itself.