Those That Regularly Come Into Contact With

It Is Extraordinary How Safe Flying Has Become. You Are Now Statistically More Likely To Be Elected President Of The United States In Your Lifetime Than You Are To Die In A Plane Crash. What An Amazing Achievement As A Society! But What We End Up Focusing On Are The Catastrophic Failures That Are Incredibly Rare But Happen Every Now And Then.

Some Great Minds Become Great By Turning The Rubble Of An Exploded Paradigm Into Something Consistent And Meaningful. Others Become Great By Laying The Gunpowder, Grain By Grain. Every Important Revolution Needs Both Kinds Of Minds To Complete Itself.

I Suspect Millions Of People From My Generation Probably Have Comparable Stories To Tell: If Not Of Sports Simulations Then Of Dungeons & Dragons, Or The Geopolitical Strategy Of Games Like Diplomacy, A Kind Of Chess Superimposed Onto Actual History.

What I'm Saying Is Individuals Have Better Ideas If They're Connected To Rich, Diverse Networks Of Other Individuals. If You Put Yourself In An Environment With Lots Of Different Perspectives, You Yourself Are Going To Have Better, Sharper, More Original Ideas. It's Not That The Network Is Smart.

If You Look At Where Innovation - Defined As Ideas, Not As Commercial Product - Tends To Live, The University System Is Remarkably Innovative.