Hyper-Specialists and the Blogosphere

Frederic    blogging, stuff    

Great post by Steve Spalding about specialization and the Internet today:

The old adage goes that a Jack of all trades is a master of none. This is mostly true, but it’s equally important to note that if you plan on being a Jack of one trade, you better know for a fact that your trade is here to stay.

There is something to be said about becoming a specialist. I know that in my field of study, I’m pretty much one out of three people in the world who work in my area. There is something very satisfying about trying to know as much as you can and maybe even be able to know more about it than anybody else ever did.

But the skill you learn in the process are important than that specialization – which is really just an amalgam of possibly arcane knowledge.

Most bloggers are not just specialists in a specific area, but we are also specialists in quickly finding, acquiring, and digesting information – and then synthesizing that knowledge back into a blog post – hopefully adding context and criticism to the original piece.

That is a skill that’s useful beyond areas of expertise.

We are getting to a point where knowing where to find information and being able to analyze it is becoming a lot more important than just purely having knowledge. Though, of course, we need to have some knowledge to allow us to put our new knowledge into context, but this cycle is moving faster and faster.

Obviously, his isn’t even very specific to the blogosphere – it’s pretty much true for any industry – but few industries move as fast as the tech industry does and nowhere else does knowledge become obsolete as quickly.

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