John,
Becomming highly specialized is indeed a double edged weapon of individual
destruction. (;-). Specialization does tend to create silos of information
and new language barriers. However how does our society leverage the
results of individual heroics, across different domains?
I believe that the environment must exist to support this. During
"rennaisance" periods, individual geniuses challenged, collaborated, and
evolved each other's works. It would be interesting to get to the essence
of their environments. I don't mean just technological advances, this was
the case for art as demonstrated by the impressionists. One work would
inspire another artist, and yield a completely unpredictable result, when
the original artist saw the "challenge" and responded in kind.
Perhaps the cafes serving absinthe had something to do with it? In any
case, these individuals were highly gifted, willing to share their work with
others, accept "feedback", and take that to further evolve their thinking
and work processes.
Chris
>From: John Hellier <
[hidden email]>
>Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
>Group<
[hidden email]>
>To:
[hidden email]
>Subject: [FRIAM] Connections and Renaissance Wo(men)
>Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 08:33:21 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Why it is so hard to be a Renaissance Wo(man). Do we
>want to be? Do we need to be? In our pursuit for more
>knowledge we seem to get more and more specialized and
>less able to follow a thread in a field different from
>our own, even when we are in the same super field. The
>details in our own field are overwhelming, frequently
>bogged down by the required - unique way of describing
>our concepts or theories.
>
>We are overwhelmed by facts and we miss connections.
>We complicate rather than simplify. What if we
>dropped the idea of being well versed in many fields
>or for that matter evaluated what is important to know
>about our own field. What if we focused on connections
>and how best to use them to solve the questions we
>have? Apply more automated processes to gathering,
>analyzing and disseminating information from and to
>all fields. Be a master of information rather than a
>deep specialist in a particular field. This sounds
>shallow and it could be without discipline.
>
>There are a lot of new wheels being created out there
>and I wonder if we are really using them to move
>forward or are we just spinning?
>
>John Hellier
>
>
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