aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, October 07, 2005

Pyramids & pancakes

I was thinking of William Gibson‘s oft quoted “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

And I thought that it applies to talent, only in reverse: Genius is evenly distributed. We just don’t know it yet.

Now the genius I mean includes a whole bunch of things, talent of all kinds: artistic ability, musical ability, craftsmanship, business acumen, you name it. Not so long ago, in order to shine in any of those areas—or, rather, in order to be more widely recognized—you had to leave your hometown and go to the city.

That was a function of our primitive ability to find and produce you; we didn’t have a more efficient structure. And for all it cost to produce you once found, you’d better be a star. Not a whole lot of room there for particular tastes.

The internet has made it possible for us to stay in our own towns and shine.

Lately I’ve been quoting Michael Lewis’s metaphor of “pyramids and pancakes.” It’s a chapter title from his 2002 book, Next: The Future Just Happened, that describes how the successful organization of the future (and the future is now) will not have a top down, pyramidal structure. Rather, the organization will be flat, like a pancake, and draw intelligence from those of us on the edges.

All this comes to mind thanks to a significantly successful week of student media production here in rural Georgia. I am wonderfully and genuinely and joyfully impressed by the quality of their student work. And this is just the beginning; their homemade micro-content is tomorrow’s Media Giant killer.

I’ve been down this road before; cable was once my technology of choice. This is better. I know they’re going to do great things.