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.
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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 …
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See also
@Meaningness on the underlying social evolution process.https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths …Show this thread -
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 …
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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End of conversation
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