Landsburg Makes Two (More) Mistakes
Steve Landsburg has a post up talking about the Beatles, so I read it with great interest. (My taste in music is almost as antiquated as my taste in economists.) After explaining that people at the time didn’t know how lasting the Beatles (or rock and roll) were going to be, he asks his readers:
How quickly are great cultural watersheds recognized for what they are? In the few areas I know something about, I think the answer is “usually pretty quickly”….In mathematics, at least in the past century (and I’m pretty sure for several centuries, or even millenia, before that), major paradigm shifts have generally been recognized very quickly. When a Serre or a Grothendieck upends the mathematical world, the mathematical world quickly knows it’s been upended.
On the other hand, it took people [remarkably] long to catch on to the significance of the Internet. I remember trying to tell people in 1992 that this Internet thing was going to be very big someday, and meeting a lot of blank stares. And even I, who was a very early adopter of email, Usenet, FTP and IRC, initially dismissed the World Wide Web as a passing fad.
So here’s the (extremely vague) question of the day: How often are cultural watersheds widely and quickly recognized, and what characterizes those that are and those that aren not? I’m not talking about fads here (so LOLcats don’t count); I’m talking about real lasting world-shaking changes. Feel free to interpret the question in any way you please, and have at it.
My title derives from the following observations:
(1) About 7 years ago, I gave a pep talk to a group of high school students to get them all fired up to go grab their dreams or something. (It was honestly the biggest bomb of a talk I have ever given as an adult. My opening joke failed, and a girl in the front row actually said aloud, “No.”) Anyway, I was trying to list examples of people who were successful but had to ignore the doubters. I mentioned J.K. Rowling getting rejected by at least a dozen (?) publishers before someone finally picked up the first Harry Potter novel, the Beatles not getting a record deal with Decca Records, and–my favorite–the fact that Godel presented his preliminary findings for “Godel’s theorem” at a math conference, and the talk wasn’t even written up in the notes about the conference. (As I remember the anecdote, some big gun–Turing maybe? von Neumann–was in the crowd and came up to talk to Godel after his presentation, but nobody else even recognized there was anything important.) And yes, I realized the irony as I was rushing just to get through the #)$(*#$* talk that I should heed my own advice, and not let the Bueller-esque response of the kids affect the enthusiasm with which I shared my advice for their lives.
(2) I think Landsburg is overlooking the most obvious cultural phenom of our age: Free Advice. Seriously, do you people realize just how big a deal I am? Sometimes I wonder. It kind of reminds me of high school. I just kept waiting for everyone to realize how cool I was, and then we graduated.
As a high schooler I can that no one gives a $%^& about “following your dreams”. Tell them something more practical, like how to think, do well in a job,a job experience you’ve had, etc.
That’s what I was trying to tell them (and you) Jordan.
“In mathematics, at least in the past century (and I’m pretty sure for several centuries, or even millenia, before that), major paradigm shifts have generally been recognized very quickly.”
I find this statement completely bogus and wrong. Major paradigm shifts take awhile to go into affect, and there is always resistance too. One time some bozzo name Liepzig thought the sequence 0101010101010101 should tend to 1/2. Anyways same thing with physics too.
Cultural shifts are different. Nobody knew Bach was going to be so huge. And great artist like Schoenberg, Charles Ives, and Eric Dolphy are still unappreciated to the rest of the world, excluding a handful of people. The other thing about the Beattles is when they came along seems to be as important as how good they were.
Von Neumann was the mathematician that recognized the importance of Godel’s Theorems.
Argh, I went back and forth between von Neumann and Turing. I was going to use Wikipedia to see if their ages could help me remember which one it may have been, but I was too lazy. Thanks I’ll change it.
I think your point about Free Advice really nails your point, Bob. It will be a long long (long) time before people recognize the significance of “the Bob Murphy” (as juxtaposed to “the Ben Bernank”).
Actually, I’m kidding. I really enjoy your blog and have enjoyed watching your upward progress. I sense dark forces (not you) lurk here though.
I suppose, as Austrians, we should expect that whether and at what rate any particular cultural phenomenon achieves watershed status should be essentially impossible for any one person to predict. Also, even where truth ought to play a role (as in, say, economic theory) and where as a result subjective preferences ought to play a lesser role, history tells us that, at least in some fields, other elements of the dynamic play a much bigger role. [Cue “someone” (do we know who?) to chime-in here with “what’s the truth anyway” or “we can’t really know the truth” or “there is no truth” or “truth is just a social construct” or “up is really down” or something].
I might be the only person on earth who thinks this, but for all their influence and popularity I’ve never understood why people think the Beatles were such geniuses. To me, Dylan is the iconic musician of the 60s.
And though he did catch the significance of Godel’s theorem, von Neumann completely failed to grasp the significance of Nash equilibrium when the two were at Princeton. Which is surprising coming from the father of modern game theory.
It was a trivial fixed point theorem.
(That’s a [geeky] joke everyone.)
The Beatles suck out the ass, they’ll never be as good as GWAR!
Hmm, that’s interesting. Especially considering the guy who currently plays as Beefcake the Mighty is named Casey Orr, and he lists the Beatles as his motivation for picking up the bass guitar, as well as listing Paul McCartney as a current influence.
http://www.bassplayer.com/article/102241
Who’s Casey Orr?
“On the other hand, it took people [remarkably] long to catch on to the significance of the Internet. I remember trying to tell people in 1992 that this Internet thing was going to be very big someday, and meeting a lot of blank stares. And even I, who was a very early adopter of email, Usenet, FTP and IRC, initially dismissed the World Wide Web as a passing fad.”
Well, I guess it all depends on your perspective, but I really don’t think it took all that long for the internet / email to catch on. As Landsburg points out, in 1992 most people and businesses had no clue. Now, less than 20 years later, almost every business in the US depends on it, and people in Libya giving the rest of the world minute by minute accounts of the happenings inside their country via twitter. That seems pretty fast to me.