The Nebulous Kingdom

The Tension Between Making and Not Making Enough

5/5/2016

Comments

 
Picture
There's something that's been simmering in me for a long time, this desire to make.  For a long, long time, I was in learning mode - jumping from learning curve to learning curve, immersing myself in different experiences and degrees, getting better for the sake of getting better.  It was the derivative curve that was meaningful, the rate of change.  While money was a basic requirement, it was never a driver. 

There was also this idea of 'making an impact,' of mentoring, of making the world better by making companies work better, of leveraging my role in a large firm to change the world at scale in subtle but meaningful ways.  I like to think that I did.

But I couldn't always see the impact.  It was sometimes too distributed, too slow, with too many hands making the pie and the largest ones capturing most of it.  

I've had this yearning to make things that were evident, so evident I didn't have to throw a narrative blanket over it to convince myself that an impact had been made.  We signed up for a lifetime membership at TechShop, then an investment in our local TechShop, because it was so satisfying working with wood and metal and laser cutters and 3D printers.  To see the tangible outcome of the work of my hands has helped me (start to) shift my identity towards the 'maker' end of a continuum.  I've been on the 'strategist' end of that axis so long that it feels very strange.

It's given me a renewed appreciation for how hard it is to make things, and that the sum total of all we see around us is amazing in the implied complexity of all these coordinated human endeavors.  I'm not a great maker, I'm not a manufacturing engineer, but I think I could be if I decided to invest myself in that direction, and that thought is new.

I've also come to understand more viscerally that DIY - at least the way it has been and to a large degree continues to be - is not economically efficient.  I'll make a loose directional statement here:  DIY is not cheaper, not better, and not faster.  Then why DIY?  Maybe let me rephrase:  DIY is not cheaper unless it circumvents a resource constraint that outweighs the additional labor costs; not better unless you synonymize 'handmade' with 'better quality' or (rare) go to a true master artisan wizened with experience; and not faster unless your local networks of exchange are not  [working/efficient/at scale].   Most of the time, DIY is not efficient though.  As a result, most DIY-ers don't make enough.

I wish it were efficient though, because I want to envision a world where we can do good work, earn the proportional value created, and see the tangible impact that we made - efficiently.  I know that I create more value for human beings when I'm in a large organization than when I'm working with my hands at TechShop.  It's a difference of scale, better coordination of complex human endeavors, and investments in infrastructure and knowledge-culture that pay back over time in efficiency and improvement.  

Traditional large organizations tend to disproportionately distribute value to financial capital (vs. human capital).  I wonder why, with technology, that has to continue to be the case.  Scale and coordination and investments can be solved in other ways - at least I can peer ahead and see the far day when they will be.  I'm excited about the blockchain, the cloud, generally the variabilizing of infrastructure costs, the growing assortment of talent-oriented startups, the possibilities in the next-generation of collaboration tools.  Unless the apocalypse comes, the next golden age lies ahead.  This time, it's different?  Yes and no.  As Murray Gell-Mann has said, the world is both regular and random.

Comments
    Picture

    Author

    I'm interested in uncertainty, time, trust, consistency, strategy, economics, empathy, philosophy, education, technology, story-telling, and fractals.
    Contact

    Archives

    May 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    January 2015
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009

    RSS Feed


    My Favorite Curators


    Email newsletters

    Edge.org
    John Mauldin
    STRATFOR
    Futurity.org
    BPS Research Digest
    Domain-B.com
    FORA.tv
    PopTech!
    PIMCO Investment Outlooks
    GMO Client Reports
    Big Think
    Commonwealth Club
    Someecards.com
    MRN Research Papers
    Chicago Booth eNewsletters
    McKinsey Quarterly
    Boldtype / Artkrush
    Singularity University
    Charlie Rose
    The Aspen Institute


    Feeds

    WNYC
    Radiolab

    This American Life
    Freakonomics Radio
    The Moth
    Chicago Booth Podcast
    The Atlantic Council
    The Memory Palace
    TED.com
    Foreign Affairs
    The Ideas Project
    Long Now Foundation
    The School of Life
    Letters of Note

    Periodicals

    The Economist
    The Wall Street Journal
    The New Yorker
    The New York Times
    Wired Magazine
    The Atlantic

    Other Websites

    Oaktree Capital Memos
    LSE Public Lectures
    Bubblegeneration
    Becker-Posner Blog
    Eric Von Hippel
    NetAge
    John Seely Brown
    Malcolm Gladwell
    John Hagel
    HBR – The Big Shift
    LookBook.nu
    Robert Shiller
    Paul Graham
    Frontline PBS
    Royal Society for the Arts
    Blake Masters

    Humor

    Best of Craigslist
    Texts from Last Night
    FMyLIfe
    MyLifeisAverage
    Lamebook
    The Onion


    Categories

    All