" [*] Yes, many of us can successfully "jockey" from one role to another as our skills shift from "fast reflexes" to "wisdom of age". But even the most successful jockeys eventually fade away."
If anything I'm more breadth oriented than I used to be. It's more a like a cash flow thing. I know I'll have to jettison a lot of attention and short/medium term memory to do depth, and so I try to find opportunities to schedule the attention in batch. As a young person, I'd run out of cash, so to speak, and be in a world of hurt. Now I collect a nice pile of cash, figuratively and literally, before jumping in. The ongoing negotiation with the people around me gets replaced with what amounts to a monetary transaction to keep them at a bay for a while. Knuth (or some favorite novelist, etc.), in contrast, had such a giant pile of (intellectual) cash he could keep people at bay, period. The "reflexes" are no worse, from age, and maybe better, but I'm not going to work 30 hours straight anymore because that's just stupid. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
