It's an extremely relevant point. I don't know. You may be right! There is another school of thought that truly interesting and transformative work comes from

It's an extremely relevant point. I don't know. You may be right! There is another school of thought that truly interesting and transformative work comes from joining up things that naturally don't go together. In this school of thought, people who focus too narrowly only ever do "normal" science, as Kuhn taught. They never achieve breakthrough. I suspect that both are valuable: skimming and remembering/assimilating random surface-level material from all over, and deep-diving into only those things that you feel matter. As an official Old Programming Dude, and a self-taught coder/consultant, what I see in the dang kids of today is a lack of being able to manage both needs. They're either great at one or the other. Neither bunch amounts to much intellectually in terms of being interesting, but at least with the focused group they are able to do some really cool stuff. Personally, I need more focus. I know this. (And I plan on finishing up 4 hours of coding and two essays by the end of the day, kid!) ADD: One of the things I've noticed about focus is that when solving problems, I work best when I manage my focus. I'll put the problem on the monitor or on the wall where it's always visible. Then I'll go do something else. Anything. As long as I can see the problem, somehow-or-another my brain keeps working on it, even if I'm not aware of it. So for many, the problem may not be HN/Twitter, but the inability to control the subtle parts of their work environment that might be preventing them from working at a higher level.