Why communication is becoming more and more important in today’s world?
In the last centuries, scientist/philosophers had all their time to discuss, understand and observe their world. In the last 40 or 50 years, we explored space, created artificial life, developed planetary communication systems, discovered the power of the nuclear, etc.
In the past they had hundreds of years to muse on their discoveries and their impacts on their world. Today we only have 1, 2, 3 or 10 years if we are lucky. Our world has changed. This new complexity brings an astronomical quantity of information to analyze and to understand. The era of generalists is finished. The thing is that we also need to muse and think about these new discoveries, has our ancestors were doing.
The generalist that thought about every aspect and impacts of a problem will be replaced by a group of specialists, communicating and cooperating, asking themselves the same questions has the old generalist. The only difference is the quantity of information to analyze and the complexity of the problems. We do not have the choice; we are becoming scientific ants, helping each other to try to reach a specific goal: understanding our new world.
It is why communication is and will be so important. We will need to change our mentality toward our peers. We will need to develop new ways to see things. We will need to continue to develop new communication and information systems to help us in to reach our goal.
Technoratie: [communication] [cooperation] [new] [world]
David
June 14, 2005 — 8:55 pm
Just to let you know, I wrote about your article on my site 🙂
Fred
June 15, 2005 — 8:56 pm
Hello David,
Thank for it, great additions to my basic ideas.
Salutations,
Fred
SL
June 15, 2005 — 8:57 pm
If communication is important and we need to understand each other more than ever, doesn’t that mean that we also need to become generalists? generalists with a specialty? And, if nature continues to tend towards the lesser effort, how will we avoid becoming such great ants, then?
Fred
June 15, 2005 — 8:57 pm
Hello, I think that you discovered the paradox: a generalist with a specialty. However the question is: are only generalists who have certain social abilities? Are only generalists who are able to manage projects and good discussions?
I like this question: “And, if nature continues to tend towards the lesser effort, how will we avoid becoming such great ants, then?”
I’ll answer to it by another one: “Who said that the nature(human nature) tend towards the lesser effort?” Remember, the leisure society that people dreamed of in the forties or fifties never materialized. It’s another paradox: the more we try to make things easier, the more we complicate things and spend time to make them work.
Salutations,
Fred
SL
June 15, 2005 — 8:58 pm
As you say, the more we simplify, the more complex everything gets.
What happens, usually, when you simplify, especially in software, is that you
move the work to a different level of specialisation. From punching cardboard
cards, to writing assembler, to making use of programming language constructs
for manipulating data structures, to encapsulating these features into
components, to architecting systems, to configurating software environnements
and using them, and so on… what you do at every step is move the field of
expertise around and to a new environment that uncovers different concerns.
Progress pushes its driver towards obsolescence and creates a need for new
breeds of experts. Perhaps, in our quest to lazyness, only the effort remains
constant!
This is why generalists — especially the social kind — have an edge. Their
skills are more transferable than those of experts. They can adapt to new
environments by laying off old experts and hiring new ones. I think those
who’ll distinguish themselves will also be curious about various expertises.
They just won’t get as much mingled in them as an expert would. I read
yesterday that many CEOs of the top US enterprises were are all technologists.
Perhaps the best way to become a generalist is to be an expert first?
Did I just contradict myself here?