How has group formation changed from the days of the Royal Society? How self-conscious were contemporaries of the Enlightenment? How have artifacts of idea communication changed throughout the centuries?
These questions and more were topics of discussion in Organizing Genius’ past session on Great Groups in Europe during the “long 18th century”. Not unsurprisingly, the aspects and lessons of important efforts back then were compared with those today, thus, provoking interesting debates on current topics of relevance as well.
“The medium is the message”
Early on, we noted that the forms of communication in 18th century Europe were quite different from the way exchange commonly happens today. Whereas the members of the Royal Society were bound to letters as the primary form of long-distance correspondence, most writing today happens via email or, increasingly through Twitter. Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, and others were early to point out the fundamental constraints that the fixed parameters of a given medium impose on its content. Whereas the medium of letters required Bacon & Co to develop their thoughts into long paragraphs and thus undergo the process of refinement regarding conciseness & coherence that is so often encountered once the barrier of entry exceeds 280 characters, said 280 characters tend to make a conversation more consistent of sound bites and immature thoughts which upon reflection might reveal to be flawed and easily refutable. The pace and scope of conversation have increased significantly and while this bears a lot of advantages, one also has to consider whether the quality of thoughts expressed through email and Twitter is generally more likely to be lower, given the fundamental constraints of the medium itself.
But not only the length of ideas plays an important role. The exchange on Twitter and blogs is inherently outward-focused and the social signaling that results from the increasingly public conversation often seems to diminish the focus on the content itself. As was noted: “Once you desire to grow your Twitter followership, your content can easily become less original and worthwhile.” It is important to note though, that the king’s officials also often supervised the mail (with the knowledge of the correspondents) so that implicitly, the exchange was outward focused as well, with messages often having a second meaning to unofficially communicate with the government.
The shared knowledge of reader and writer about the time and effort required to establish the old-school correspondence from start to finish, idea generation to the arrival of a letter after weeks of transportation, also arguably promoted more tolerance on the side of the recipient in case of controversy. The investment of time would probably cause one to assume the best intent on the side of the sender (at least more often than nowadays) and, in an ambiguous situation, skew toward giving him the benefit of the doubt.
It is interesting to look at the artifacts of these early intellectual groups and think about what aspects of today’s conversation will be preserved a century from now.
As was pointed out during the discussion, this, of course, isn’t the entire picture. We don’t have to be completely passive about the medium we are given and can to an extent still dictate the shape we want our messages to take. But this requires active engagement and, importantly, the consciousness of the challenges which are tied to the tools we use for communication in the present moment.
The prevalence of cancel culture
The increasingly fast-paced and public conversations on social media (and even in the corporate sphere through leaked memos) pose more of a threat to an individual’s reputation and thus promote more risk aversion concerning what is said. Where today can groups exchange ideas more freely?
This has been a recurring theme in previous discussions, but it has importantly been pointed out that it is easy to fall for a kind of observability bias here. As reclusive groups are by definition not visible and private exchanges stay private (or so one hopes), as outsiders we will always skew toward the belief that there might be a lack of safe spaces for intellectual openness today, whereas it might be alive and well for those involved. As one hears more academics and professionals express dissatisfaction with the health of conversation though, one starts to think that certain fields might actually be lacking these important spaces – hence we discussed exclusivity and its value.
Exclusivity vs equality of access
Nowadays exclusivity often gets a bad reputation. Equality of access and transparency is favored over secluded groups that operate away from the metaphorical town square of the virtual world. But this exclusivity, as has previously been discussed, might well be what it takes for an innovative group of great minds to self-radicalize in a “safe space”, secluded from attacks on the unconventional.
At the same time though, the general access to scientific and cultural information has risen dramatically. Thanks to the web, anyone can learn from many of the most qualified people in the world which has greatly leveled the playing field of knowledge acquisition. A member of the group recounted that in his childhood, part of one’s early intellectual luck was dependent on one’s family possessing an encyclopedia. Considering the fact that intellectual endeavors in even earlier centuries required the approval of a central authority as well as a societal status that was determined at birth and often insurmountable later on, the significance of the increased equality to participate which we take for granted today becomes especially salient.
Throughout history, there have been other times when barriers to access were removed in various ways and to different extents. Gutenberg’s printing press was one of the greatest revolutions the world of knowledge has ever seen. Once wide access to knowledge has been ensured, can the state still effectively control its population? It seems like with equality of access to a conversation, in a flatter world per se, culture becomes more fractal whilst an individual’s conditioning is less determined by local norms and cultures and more on the subgroups he partakes in.
Science, in its infancy (when it wasn’t yet officially formalized as such), was tied to a luxurious life with regular opera attendances and extravagant salons where the tip of society gathered to discuss ideas. The prestige of this way of life eventually also attracted the ungenuine who, again, were more about the image than the substance.
We discussed how aesthetics and sincerity interplay today. Many tech entrepreneurs call for a revival of aesthetics of their field, perhaps with the hope of attracting more talent away from the tracked, prestigious paths of law and finance and into more impactful areas of STEM.
Shouldn’t the tech world work on its aesthetics in order to get more young people interested in the sector? As with movies like the Social Network or prominent gurus like Musk, we see that cultural content and aspirational figures can exert a strong pull on the ambitions of young adults. Of course, the danger is that this might attract the wrong sort of person – “bottom-up” interest in a field being preferable to PR efforts, so to speak. But if we look at the scientists who idolized Feynman or the generation of engineers who were driven by their era’s successes like the moon landing, one has to wonder whether we are losing capable people who will invest their brainpower into spreadsheets and mundane metrics to make partner instead of working at SpaceX. There’s a lot of demand in tech – could the cultural picture play a more important role that is largely neglected at the present moment?
Institutions, Process & their Sclerosis
Why did the Royal Society intentionally form outside of Oxford, from the get-go? Why do so many successful efforts generally take place outside of tracked institutions? Perhaps it is just natural for institutions, as they become bigger and have more of a reputation attached to them, to slow down, become more inflexible and thus lose their appeal to new and controversial-sounding efforts. More hierarchies and responsibilities tend to decrease speed, spontaneity, and innovation.
But whereas groups in the 18th century never had the option to be active without the approval of the king, nowadays the gatekeepers to innovative projects are increasingly removed. Software startups can be initiated in a garage, more and more talent programs are scouting globally, and resources are broadly available online. So naturally, the question arises, now more than ever, whether we really need these institutions anymore.
As was stated multiple times, science and innovation may not be as effective as they could be if we reformed the tooling (including institutions and processes) with which efforts are carried out. For example, it was voiced that a new form of academic publishing is needed to counteract the rent-seeking that is often found when authoritative academics get added as authors of papers when really they didn’t contribute valuable efforts, whilst those on lower ranks of the academic ladder get omitted from recognition. A GitHub model of science was suggested, which could promote more transparency in the research process, from information gathering and hypothesizing to writing the actual paper. Push and pull requests would be visible to anyone and one could perhaps even access the important, but institutionally disliked, negative results of research projects that traditionally are so often kept unpublished after their finding and hurt overall science as a result.
An effort like this is the result of the general sentiment that institutionally, there might be too much emphasis on rank instead of the actual content. Like other areas, academia isn’t untouched by power laws which can cause important academic metrics like citations to depend on an academic’s name more than on his actual research and will, for example, cause him to get mentioned disproportionally often because of other’s positive association with the name’s prestige and its appearance in their own work.
Inefficiencies can not only be found in publishing but in funding as well. Incremental projects get preferred while crazy ideas in a traditional setting often die shortly after inception due to risk aversion. In the past years, we have seen more and more programs popping up, often backed by wealthy individuals who try to find and back the moonshots that could potentially lead to important discoveries. More risk-friendly venture firms like Founders Fund, Bezos’ efforts in space flight, and talent programs like Emergent Ventures are only some examples of this – and the trend seems to keep growing. Could the billionaire-funders be a promising future model of risky projects, where governments and corporations stagnate? Arguably, some projects are so costly and complex that states have to be involved, but as SpaceX has shown, a wealthy individual and an initially audacious-sounding idea can attract government cooperation (as with NASA) once significant early milestones have demonstrated the previously ignored potential a given innovation has. So, more capital flowing to ambitious, bright, but high-risk proposals from a private, relatively autonomous source could, in fact, be critical to getting more ideas off the ground in the future.
Of fishbowls and the perception of innovation
A question, which to me is endlessly fascinating (and which luckily comes up, in one form or another, at nearly every meeting) is whether members of projects that turn out to be revolutionary are generally oblivious to the significance of their activities at the time of a project’s early stages. Generally, there seems to be an ambiguity that many groups recall concerning their early days and doubt was hardly absent from the seed stage of their efforts.
But still, the conviction of members has to be strong enough to cause them to push through difficulties and attract others to their team. Gradually they self-radicalize and form a narrative that gets reinforced as with time some of their early-held beliefs are confirmed; this bottom-up formation of culture being one of the strongest arguments for the initial physicality and exclusivity of great groups. But just how much were the members of PARC, the Homebrew Computer Club, or Fairchild aware of the world around them and what role their project would play in it?
An interesting analogy here, voiced on The Portal, is that of distant and immediate knowledge. You may have believed something before its happening, yet it still didn’t manifest itself in your actions – there still was some doubt that held you back from taking the theory to execution, leaving you surprised when what you predicted actually turns out to be true.
In Eric Weinstein’s words, do we, like fish in fishbowls in relation to the water that is all around and yet never makes itself apparent, generally, have a hard time seeing the medium in which our own lives play out? Did Genius, as in the early days of science, have no sense of the grandeur of what was actually happening? Francis Bacon’s ideas, as many groundbreaking theses, laid dormant for decades until their value was grasped once and for all.
Many of us hold convictions, clever ideas, and yet part of what separates great from average is the actions following these ideas. Taking them seriously is somewhat of a critical jump that many people never dare. How can we promote more followthrough?
A tight-knit, self-radicalizing community itself seems critical to the prolonged motivation of moonshot teams, which can lead both to plain crazy convictions or to cults that eventually produce the iMac.
As noted, in the 16th century, the king’s approval was both mandatory and quite confirmative of a group’s idea. Having the “OK” from such an authority might have reinforced the ambitions of the members involved in the Royal Society’s creation and intensified early science’s (again, with no accurate sense of its relevance) spread, furthered by public approval. While this regulation seems restrictive and one would not wish to need a central -and for most people back then unapproachable- authority’s approval to start-up something today, it is possible to imagine a certain sense of security that was perhaps established due to the king’s confirmation. A security to the structure of the project in general. This is somewhat reminiscent of Anne Wojcicki’s take on the positive aspects of 23 & Me being an FDA-regulated company (paraphrased): “There is a perk to being bound to the process. You know your next steps, what you need to do.” In other words, it can be comforting for animals of habit to see an order of things.
But of course, innovation works best when its boundaries aren’t set by the outside and people are allowed to dream big and act on their ideas, unbothered by a central authority. We have come a long way in removing the barriers to entry for ambitious endeavors. How to add to the existing superhighway of information a highway of increased and faster execution remains an open question. Luckily, today we have an increasing number of individuals, programs, and institutions trying different approaches to get people to follow through with their ideas. And as we’ve seen with the efforts of most great groups, the value of tinkering is never to be underestimated.
Readings for this session included chapters of The Royal Society by Adrian Tinniswood, The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution by Joel Mokyr, and New Atlantis by Francis Bacon.