.
>
> There is this myth, most prevalent in America, that we should be these
> lone independant cowboys, clinched and closed with the Frozen North, alone
> on the Prairie in our sod house braving the elements.  We have these
> images of Einstein working alone solving the mysteries of the universe, or
> Edison working alone in the lab inventing the light bulb.  Einstein had an
> active correspondence with many scientists, and Edison had a whole staff
> working for him and big money behind him.
>

To take this all further OT....

RE: Edison & collaboration

There is a whole subculture out there debating the Edison vs. Tesla "Who is
the purest inventor?" argument. Tesla worked at Menlo park for Edison, and
some (me included) put him in the category of "way too bright to work for
Tom". Edison fits the mold of the master promoter, but maybe not the master
technologist that he was made out to be in the popular press. Remember how
he was absolutely convinced that all power had to be distributed as DC?

Menlo Park has been described as an "inventor's sweatshop" with some
justification. TAE had over 1000 "collaborators" at one point toiling in the
trenches. See
http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Thomas_Edison.html for
some info.

All of this is not to gig collaboration. It is the only sane way to work if
you actually have to deliver product to the customer. The PICLIST is a fine
example of collaboration at it's best.

I taught engineering at a major university for about 10 years. What I
brought out of that experience is a lot of frustration at how expertise in
the creative area of design is measured. The traditional way to measure
skill in the university setting is how good the student is at regurgitating
arcane facts and how good he/she is at dealing with complex mathematics.
Neither of these skills mean much when you get out of school and actually
sit down to create something. Knowing where to go to find an answer (or who
to ask) has a lot more to do with design productivity than performing
first-principle analysis by solving partial differential equations. That is
called collaboration and is the way the world actually works most
effectively.

My observation over three decades of going into companies big and small as a
consultant: There is usually only one person in any company (regardless of
size) that comprehensively knows all the products of that organization from
theory through production. He/She is the guru. All others are collaborators.
It is interesting to note how many companies "lose the recipe" when that
person retires or goes off to start their own company.

Ed Gisske

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.