Same number of ideas. More noise.
Does The New York Times TRY to be as absurdly out of touch as possible?
In an opinion piece in the Times, Neal Gabler argues that the sheer volume of information today has squeezed out the big idea, much as Gresham’s Law dictates that bad money will squeeze out the good.
First of all, the comparison to Gresham’s Law is specious; it relies on people hoarding undervalued money. No one is hoarding ideas, that defeats the purpose.
Secondly, Gabler asks, where is our Einstein, where is our McLuhan? First of all, these individuals have always been anomalies. He says even if we do have them, we don’t put them on talk shows. He even mentions Richard Dawkins as one of the few big-ideas types that’s currently running around. Apparently Dawkins’s appearances on The Colbert Report and his bestsellers don’t count.
Thirdly, Gabler seems simply to be out of touch with the world today. He mentions Dawkins, and Jonathan Haidt, who’s been featured in The New York Times recently and is soon to have a new book out. What about Martin Seligman, who’s got a few bestsellers of his own and a TED talk, not to mention plenty of pull in both corporate America, the military, and international affairs? How about Karen Armstrong who’s assembled what maybe the largest detente among the world’s religions in history? What about Clayton Christensen, whose model of innovation has shaped the conversation in business, non-profit, and government over the last 15 years? Or Steven Levitt’s model of using economics to study the relations between crime rate and abortion? Or Dan Ariely’s notion that economics needs to shift to an IRrational actor model?
Seems to me there’s plenty of world-changing ideas in the world. But there is more noise. It doesn’t necessarily follow that more noise will drown them out.
