The case for late blooming

I like reading Wired. Have I mentioned that enough? Seriously, the world would be a better place if more people read Wired. And not by a little, we're talking significant social and environmental changes.

Also, people who would drive IT departments worldwide into a constant state of annoyance and panic. I'm looking out for the well-being of my friends and their families.

The only small hitch is that they are pretty saavy about how they release their online content. A story every few days is all you get, but it's totally worth it. Case in point is this beauty on creativity.

My newest intellectual homeboy is David Galenson, a University of Chicago professor who had a whole lot of words dedicated to him this article to say this: Some people have a world-changing concept and make an immediate, powerful impact on their scene, be it art, economics or literature, while others try and fail repeatedly, eventually finding their stride.

“Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

This means we've all been given enough time to do something worthwhile in the eyes of the general public and even if we overshoot the landing, we'll be long dead.

Arise, slacker masses! No longer do we lack talent, ambition or the means to make a jarring impact on our chosen field and the world around us - we are simply experimentalists, never satisfied with our work and never setlling for our latest plan or idea.

Take that, Doogie Howser - You can kiss my worthless, aging ass.

(Image from mortystv.com)