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My favorite Stephenson book (thus far, I haven't read all of them yet) Anathem (2008) seems to directly capture this assumptions about the power of isolation on
by saeranv 6y ago
My favorite Stephenson book (thus far, I haven't read all of them yet) Anathem (2008) seems to directly capture this assumptions about the power of isolation on mental ability. Anathem describes a society of monks (the avout) that are isolated from the outside world, and also other monks. Their isolation basically allows them to cultivate mental superpowers in math, science, and philosophy, relative to people media-addled people on the outside.
When I was reading it, I had this romantic notion that the avout are kind of like our scholars in universities, isolated to pursue some narrow specialization without attention from the outside world. But, it's kind of depressing to realize how much even academics are pressured to play the social media game. There was even that paper (posted here on HN) that showed that researchers that tweeted more got more citations on their paper.
- didericis 6y agoI used to think hiring people to manage social media was kind of silly unless you were some big brandname or marketing heavy organization, but it seems like a decent way to get most of the visibility benefits while avoiding the distraction related downsides, and a good opportunity to employ people. Depending how much you need to post to say relevant, I can’t imagine most modestly successful small scale businesses/authors/academics etc would find it that expensive. I cut out social media a while ago and have never hired anybody for it, so I might be a bit out of touch/underestimating what people expect your personal involvement or frequency of posting to be like, but it seems like something a fair number of people could afford to offload.