Chris Lott

Scott Rosenberg—author of the fascinating Dreaming in Code and the always-interesting Wordyard blog—has a new book out that looks even more interesting than his first: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters.

There’s an excerpt up at Salon which doesn’t diminish my interest, but does rub me the wrong way just a little bit. Either Rosenberg actually believes what I am about to quote, or he doesn’t see the conflation he uses to make it plausible, or he doesn’t care to make a more nuanced argument. He writes:

According to this perspective, talent is a resource of fixed supply. The existing institutions of the publishing and broadcast world are already doing an efficient and thorough job of finding all that talent and giving it a platform. And all this other stuff that’s spewing forth from the Web’s profusion of blogs and podcasts and videos? It’s just dross that obscures the real talent’s output.

Beyond the obvious arrogance, this view misreads and underestimates the Web in several ways. It’s a mistake to think of human creativity as a kind of limited natural resource, like an ore waiting for society to mine; it is more like a gene that will turn on given the right cues.

I can’t disagree with where Rosenberg is going, but not only is the idea of talent as a limitless resource wrong on its face, but it’s not “obvious arrogance” to keep that fact in mind when considering the media and artistic landscapes that the web is part of.

The idea that there is limitless talent is just another take on that warm, particularly American, and ultimately harmful mythos that anyone is capable of doing everything if they just (gosh darn it!) work hard enough. But there’s no evidence that this happy fiction has any truth to it… and plenty of evidence, in the shape of the world of art and media around us, that it’s untrue. It’s easy—and it feels good!–to maintain this illusion as often as we can, despite it’s harmful consequences (just look at our train-wreck of an educational system to see some of them). But put yourself or a loved one in a situation where their life or livelihood depends on the skill of another—undergoing delicate brain surgery, say—and you know as well as I do that you’re going to want the surgeon that has not just trained and worked to become the best, but who did so with the most generous helping of talent to capitalize on.

But Rosenberg’s second paragraph above is true, thanks to a conflation of talent and creativity. Talent is clearly a limited resource. Creativity is not. Anyone can, and should, create. That is a fundamentally fantastic characteristic of the read/write web. They might not have any talent at writing in general or the specific forms they choose to utilize. But in most of the important ways that’s not the point.

A more nuanced argument could go along a few different lines. You could say that, since everything is news to someone, there’s no need for the traditional focus on that kind of creation which will appeal to the most people. You could argue from the perspective of the positive aspects of self-expression and creative activities regardless of the talent one has (or doesn’t have). You could argue that while talent is limited, it’s very difficult to know where those limits are—and impossible to know in advance—so there’s no harm in acting as if there’s no practical limit. You could argue that limits on talent aren’t important because it isn’t really about how much talent there is, but how many talents, because each person must find theirs (this isn’t a philosophy that can be proven, but at least it takes into account the very obvious condition of individuals having little or no talent for particular activities, despite their effort). The last sentence quoted above goes in this direction, but because an important change has been made—from talent to creativity, which are not synonymous—it doesn’t quite get there.

The important point being made by Rosenberg still stands, of course: the old rules don’t apply. But it’s not because there’s no such thing as talent and it’s not because there’s a limitless supply of talent to be had… it’s because in one important operative, functional sense, one reason that talent mattered—as a way to determine prioritization of access to limited resources for publication and sharing—has become relatively unimportant. That’s a huge, fundamental change, the importance of which can’t be overstated… but let’s not use it to perpetuate a myth of endless talent and absolute equality which, ironically, serves to undermine our culture’s support for that already beleaguered natural resource.

I’m sure David Brooks works very hard. In fact, I’m sure he has spent the Gladwell-ian 10,000 hours practicing his craft. Which is why he should look to himself as an example before he starts peddling this kind of twaddle:

"Some people live in romantic ages. They tend to believe that genius is the product of a divine spark. They believe that there have been, throughout the ages, certain paragons of greatness — Dante, Mozart, Einstein — whose talents far exceeded normal comprehension…"

In their constant rush to figure out a way to elevate the ordinary– which must naturally include themselves– writers like Brooks fall into exactly the trap I was describing a few days ago… making a straw man argument of "genius is all" instead of the common (and rather obvious) argument that "genius is necessary." Genius in this context has nothing to do with IQ, of course, and everything to do with what a person can ultimately create and do.

I’m in no way diminishing the necessity for long hours of practice that the studies Brooks and others refer to accurately point out. But is this news? After all, what’s the secret to getting to Carnegie Hall? Of course those at the top of their field and craft have spent an enormous amount of time working to get there. That’s not in question. What’s at issue is whether others could get there if they just practiced as much and with the same effort and deliberation.

Without a gift one can practice any number of hours and he or she will never reach a particularly high level. And without an immense gift, they will never be an Einstein or a Tiger Woods. Call it what you want– genius, talent, innate ability, aptitude, but it exists– as easily evidenced by the masses of the average and the mediocre who nonetheless pursue their goal with admirable persistence. And as much as we might wish it to be so, these gifts aren’t subject to the best selling (and rather sad) democratization the self-help industry tries to impose.

If you took Brooks’s hypothetical young woman who "possessed a slightly above average verbal ability" that was "just enough so that she might gain some sense of distinction" and followed the prescription he outlines you would end up with a slightly above average writer who had maximized her talent through hard work. If fortune were in your favor you might have a mid-list novelist, or one of the many unknown academics who haunt the fringes of the annual MLA conference. Perhaps you would even end up with a New York Times op-ed columnist famous for her wrong-headed political predictions and deceit. But what you wouldn’t have on your hands is Jane Austen.

The necessity of talent to become the next Shakespeare or Michelangelo shouldn’t be discouraging. The reason books denying the necessity of talent sell so well is natural. And what this means for education is important. I’ll discuss each of those in future posts.