Reading Learn Better - mainly because I am very interested in understanding how I can continue to learn as I grow older. Early in the book, the author says:
..in the Internet Age, information is fire-sale cheap, and within tenths of a second on Google, we can figure out how proteins bind with plasma. Dinner-party disputes are quickly settled with a swipe of a finger on an iPhone. What’s more, mastery itself is constantly shifting. The life cycle of expertise has become ever shorter—over the past ten years, for instance, the car-sharing service Uber shot from an obscure app to a household name. This shifts both how and why we acquire new skills and knowledge, because practice alone doesn’t make perfect anymore. We need to develop more than simple procedures in order to succeed, and the modern world requires that people know how to learn—and develop the thinking skills that matter.
I love the fire-sale cheap metaphor for the cost of information. Being cheap and ubiquitous renders information unglamorous too. Used to be the most erudite person at the dinner table had read the right books and journals on the topic and once they opined the rest of us had to hold our peace. We did not know better - most often we did not even have access to the sources they did. Now, it is a free for all. Everyone who skims the top ten search results to any question is on equal footing with the person who spent their career getting good in that topic. To a degree, it is no longer interesting or worthwhile to have depth in a specific area. You would rather chase after the skills that are au courant, being prepared to switch gears and lanes in a year because something new will come along by then. Then phenomenon is particularly easy to observe in the world of IT.
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