Age Is Just A Number

When is the right time to make a scientific discovery?

Maybe after your education is out of the way? Whew, now I don’t have to learn any more!

It turns out that education isn’t so much about learning facts as about learning how to add to and make use of your knowledge. Education becomes a lifetime practice.

While still in his teens, Benoit Mandelbrot saw science as a game where he would bring knowledge from another field of study to create breakthroughs. Of course, he thought he was losing valuable time applying himself to several fields of study, and working directly with some of the scientific giants of his age.

Maybe working with the best is part of the formula. Stewart Emery says the second requirement for growth is to surround yourself with people who are committed to growth.

My friend Ben, who has been training to become one of your guides at the Smithsonian Museum, shared a video about a scientist who made a discovery which has greatly added to our knowledge of early human origins. That scientist was nine at the time.

In the video, his father, Explorer In Residence at the National Geographic Society, discusses the importance of really seeing what is in front of you, because discoveries aren’t “out there” somewhere else, they are generally right where you choose to really look.

 http://youtu.be/zHcV_sBxpas

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The Lost Blogging Manual

Scott Rosenberg’s Say Everything How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, And Why It Matters is a homecoming book for me.

In a history of blogging, he explains why blog time is faster than print time, has great quotes from my forty favorite bloggers, friends, and heroes, and provides a context for some of the knotty questions I’ve read or thought about.

On journalists versus bloggers, he thinks it was unfortunate that blogs exploded as print media imploded, doesn’t think one has much to do with the other, and observes that most of the sniping is conducted by journalists ranting on their blogs. It’s tough to lose.

Rosenberg shows a dizzying range of uses and business models for blogs and how they worked out. I got a new appreciation for Sales Lab Posts and Through The Browser as well as ideas for where to go next.

If you blog or want to blog, read Say Everything. You’ll be encouraged and have a better context for proceeding.

Now I’m going to put in some of the pieces that meant a lot to me while reading the book (yes, it’s that good and that important), so I’ll now have a place to come back for them. They are a tiny part of the book.

Evan Williams of Blogger and Twitter implements the “ruthless simplicity” business model when its down to him, keeping Blogger going, alone in his apartment. 130

Dan Gillmor, journalist to blogger, My readers know more than I do 134

Andrew Sullivan, Peer-to-peer journalism, I realized, had a huge advantage over old-style journalism. It could marshal the knowledge and resources of thousands, rather than the certitudes of the few. 137

Kos, Blogs are a tool, nothing more. 142

Dave Winer, It was a mistake to believe that creativity was something you could delegate, no matter how much better they were than you, because it’s an important human activity, like breathing eating, walking, laughing, loving. 185

Joel Spolsky’s blogging formula, A series of essays delivered informally, blog style...festooned his technical discourse with recollections from his days in the Israeli army and references to the Yiddish folktales he cherished.. 172

Jon Udell, The demonstration of knowledge and expertise over time in a weblog is the modern equivalent of a resume. 173

Doc Searls, If you’re into blogs to make money, you’re into it for the wrong reasons. Do you ask your back porch what its business plan is?

Difference between making money with a blog and because of a blog.

This sort of blogging wasn’t really a media business at all, one in which you offer some creative material or “content” to gather a crowd and then sell the attention of that crowd to somebody else. It was more like a kind of low-cost direct marketing - an advertisement for yourself, by yourself. 173

Richard Dawkins, Meme – name for an infectious (or viral) concept or idea. 209

Clay Shirky, Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality. A mathematical explanation of why the top bloggers stay the top bloggers. 213

Clay Shirky, It’s not impossible to launch a new blog and become highly read, but it’s harder than it was last year and it will be still harder next year. 216

Insider’s Joke Instead of being famous for 15 minutes, being famous for 15 people 217

Chris Anderson, A passionate amateur almost always beats a bored professional. 282

Marc Andreessen, led the Mosaic browser development. When he was taking Ning to over 750,000 social networks, he was getting a lot of attention blogging. Andreessen’s blog was my first subscription, substantially changing my work process. I’ve said Marc was the Peter Drucker of the web.

After he left Ning, Marc took down his blog. Jed Christiansen liked Marc’s blog more (and more usefully) than I did, he resurrected it. I go back and read it often.

Marc Andreessen, I should have started doing this years and years ago.

Anyone who says blogs are not widely read is incorrect. I have been absolutely amazed at the range and diversity of the people who have been reading this blog, and so quickly.

It is crystal clear to me now that at least in industries where lots of people are online, blogging is the single best way to communicate and interact. 302

Clay Shirky, The web inverts the publishing structure. Say everything first, then filter. 318

Endnotes (links) are curated at sayeverything.com.

Thank you for reading the parts I wanted to save. Since you came this far, you might also like these posts:

How To Start Blogging

Building Your Social Media Platform

Change Of Command

A friend I started serving on a Board with 30 years ago, has been recruited (at 80!) and is relocating. I heard the story and said, “Somebody should throw him a party!”

Not being a party thrower, I asked our executive officer, an eager, hispanic Radar O’Reilly, “How much do I front you to get this done?”

The next day the XO called and said a lot of people from the organization wanted to attend, was that OK?

I had thought maybe a dozen of the old timers would be interested. In real time, I realized that this was more than recognition of a hard worker who stayed the course, more than a group hug.

This is a chance to show maybe a hundred people what good is. A change of command ceremony is a huge opportunity to teach culture.

Sometimes just getting underway opens new possibilities. 

Rainmakers – Five minute flashes of insight.

 

The Kepler Moment

Reading The Fractalist, Memoir of a Scientific Maverick, Benoit Mandelbrot’s autobiography, he was continually looking for the possibility of a Kepler Moment. If I had a science teacher who understood and communicated the concept, I probably would have ended up as more of a researcher.

Mandelbrot’s lifetime search for the Kepler Moment is the game of creative science.

When Copernicus developed the heliocentric model of the solar system, he posited that planet orbits were circular. As observational data improved, much of it didn’t fit circular orbits.

A century and a half later, Johannes Kepler realized that the oval shape of observed orbits were caused by two or more gravitational centers flattening a round orbit to more of an oval. That was the first Kepler Moment, assuring his scientific fame and opening new areas of research.

Another aspect of the Kepler Moment was how taking knowledge from one field of study (geometry) could overcome a block in another field of study (astronomy).

From an early age, Mandelbrot was looking for his Kepler Moments, storing knowledge from a variety of disciplines. His search to knowledge led him away from traditional fields of study and safe, tenured positions to seek the cutting edge of scientific inquiry.

Mandelbrot was never insulated from the world. His parents had to start over six times before he got to college, and his high school was spent dodging Vichy government in WWII France. With postdoctoral study at CalTech, Geneva, Paris, MIT, and the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), he got up close and personal with many of the leading scientists of post WWII, and saw their Kepler Moments.

He thought he was a slow starter taking years in the pursuit of knowledge to build his foundational base, but by the end of his career he had created over a dozen Kepler Moments, in a wide variety of fields, and invented the successor to calculus, the study of fractals.

Calculus is the measurement of infinite points in a line, fractals is the study of roughness of surfaces.

By the end of his career, he had bound together many fields of study, creating a string of Kepler Moments. That’s a career plan for a scientist.

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Letters To A Young Scientist

Have you ever been called to give advice to someone just starting their career?

Heck, have you ever considered giving yourself a career checkup?

Letters To A Young Scientist by Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward O. Wilson is a delight. Twenty one “letters” (actually each is more focused than a letter, how about a great blog post?) shows how the author got into the science business, the coming importance of science and technology, how to work constructively, where career growth comes from, and mathematics.

Wilson is concerned that too many pre-scientists are scared off early by math bullies, who convince them they don’t know, can’t know enough math to be professional. He’s not against mathematics, just against using math as an early disqualifying tool.

As he sees it, most of research is data collection. After the data is collected and the hypothesis stated, there is some room for someone with a “math toolbox” to assist. A researcher can call on just about any mathematician to get his math.

However, a mathematician without field data to work on is a theorist, scribbling on the white board.

Then magnanimously, Wilson identifies the scientific fields where theoretical math is most valuable.

I have read and watch enough misused math to know that No Matter How Hard You Do The Wrong Thing, It Never Quite Works.

How to pick a career? Start with your passion. That will make it easier to fill in your education. Ph.D.s without a passion have a hard road.

Don’t be afraid to jump to a new passion when it comes along, usually as part of investigating/developing your current passion. Hit hard every swing. Time’s awastin’

New work comes from what you discover in your current work, enlarging, creating context, joining knowledge, creating new opportunities.

This is a book that builds confidence to quit worrying and start doing.

I wish I belonged to a book club where we could give each letter its own session. This book is that good.

Read Letters To A Young Scientist and then give it to someone you love.

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