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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      Out of necessity they have to work on/around deficiencies of medium and get hands dirty. Typically they are much more deeply knowledgeable about their tools than later institutional era non-innovator blue-collar types, who will also work at the tool level, but at stable maturity.

      1 reply 0 retweets 21 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      Often they may seem “overqualified” for the tool level. Early computing pioneers like Turing, von Neumann, and Richard Hamming were often mathematicians who knew vastly more math than modern programmers ever learn. If formally credentialed, they may look like they’re slumming it.

      1 reply 1 retweet 34 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      Interesting datapoint: much of the hands-on early work on drones and driverless cars was done at university labs by people getting Masters or PhD degrees. They did everything from soldering to writing advanced math papers. But today a high-school kid can work with the tech.

      1 reply 1 retweet 27 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      But credentials are not necessary for a BCIMIN. Only the impedance mismatch between the depth of knowledge and experience being brought to bear on the work, and the seemingly “beneath them” level of hands-on-work and mucking about at the tool level.

      1 reply 2 retweets 24 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      I’ve seen credentialed, decorated types literally turn up their noses with “this is contractor/intern/newbie grunt work”. When a respected, high-reputation person says something like that, I immediately flip the bozobit and look skeptically at their supposed great reputation.

      2 replies 7 retweets 53 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      Invariably I find they’ve been doing shallow, dull work aimed at racking up institutional merit points (number of papers/patents, awards etc). They are the Paris Hiltons of innovation. Famous for being famous. A resume stuffed with everything except blue-collar innovation.

      1 reply 0 retweets 43 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      Blue-collar innovators are “new medium pilot plant” producers. Their workspaces/tooling are inbetween basic research labs and scaled production. They produce in small batches not because they have artisan sensibilities but because they’re pushing the scaling limits of new media.

      1 reply 1 retweet 31 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      BCIMINs are the most stimulating and energizing place for most smart, creative, imaginative, and growth-oriented people to participate in. It’s not the rare lightning-strike regime that creates pioneers, nor is it the predictable world of institutions built around stable tools.

      1 reply 0 retweets 35 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      I’d guess 1% of the population will end up as pioneers, 9% as blue-collar innovators, and 90% as mature-institution normies. Of that 90%, a third to half (so 30-45% of total) will be bullshit workers, predators and parasites at maturity. Free riders of one sort or the other.

      2 replies 4 retweets 38 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      This is fine. I approve of non-producing free riders right up to the point that kills the host process of wealth creation. It’s only good wealth if it produces a surplus, and somebody has to consume it. Somebody has to eat all that cake.

      2 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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      Modern startup ecosystems and open-source communities before large-scale financialization are of course the most familiar example of BCIMINs, but it’s a more general phenomenon. See for example steam engines after James Watt’s patents expired: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23603566?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents …

      12:15 PM - 2 Feb 2019
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      • The (W)hole Truth Uncle Ari Dude-Bro David Merriman Uday T Kumar orbatos Santiago Tórtora Marshall Kirkpatrick Mike Malveaux
      2 replies 0 retweets 24 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          Robert Allen called BCIMINs “collective invention settings” (his concept is the basis for the paper above). A more contemporary model is settler phase of Cringley’s pioneer-settler-town planner model which @swardley incorporated into his mapping model. https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-town-planners-and.html …

          2 replies 2 retweets 19 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          The model applies to cultural production too. See the idea of scene-hacking from @sebpaquethttps://www.slideshare.net/mobile/vgururao/scene-hacking …

          1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          And to general intellectual production. See Fred Turner on “network celebrity” https://fredturner.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/Turner-Larson-Network-Celebrity-PC-2015.pdf …

          2 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          See also @Meaningness on the underlying social evolution process.https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths …

          1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          BCIMINs are a *natural* expression of human motivations. When they are repressed, potential blue-collar innovators turn to crime and other pathological activities. You can’t get rid of the 9%. See this Baumol paper. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2937617?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents …

          1 reply 1 retweet 21 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          For fun fictional portraits of a BCIMIN era, try Terry Pratchett’s Raising Steam or HBO’s Deadwood. Let’s finish with some subtle takeaways.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          1. Innovation watchers often uncritically fetishize either credentialed expertise or unqualified blue-collar doerism. Nope. BCIMINs run on expertise (credentialed or not) *slumming at blue-collar levels*. Get this wrong and you’ll end up either academic posturing or JohnHenryism.

          1 reply 4 retweets 39 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          2. The 90% normies often assume the 1% pioneers are the only ones who matter and form “scenes” of personality cults around them. The 9% BCIMIN types are often viewed with suspicion and become targets of societal policing. This never works. They just turn to crime etc.

          1 reply 1 retweet 30 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          3. Unlike the 1%, who have a love-hate tortured relationship with fame and the attention of the 90%, the 9% neither attract, nor crave the spotlight. But they will not toe the lines or conform to societal norms or social proof either. They’ll tolerate some spotlight as a burden.

          2 replies 0 retweets 23 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          4. They aren’t a community. They are a network of competing/cooperating individuals stealing tricks from each other. Ideas diffuse slowly through the BCIMIN, as each skeptically tests tricks before adopting. It’s not viral meme floods. It’s a slow network with fad defenses.

          1 reply 4 retweets 29 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Feb 2019
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          All this is fairly well-known and uncontroversial to students of innovation history. But people who enter BCIMINs attracted by 1% personality cults or with an uncritical fetish for either credentials or blue-collarism invariably don’t last. They crash and burn as scenesters.

          1 reply 0 retweets 25 likes
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        13. End of conversation

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