Having been a geeky kid in high school, who was good in math and science, the story was instantly recognizable, and I erupted into laughter -- the kind that recognizes an irony in life.
Dr. Martin Chalfie wins the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, for his work on green fluorescent proteins that help scientists study disease. With this prize, and the recognition it brings, Dr. Chalfie's network starts to change. People want to be associated with fame & recognition, even if they do not get it themselves. Many contacts came in to Dr. Chalfie, some new, some old. It was an old dormant tie from high school that forms the basis of the story.
One woman from his high school days in Skokie, Ill., told him, “You know, several of my friends had crushes on you."
I wrote her back to say, "Why are telling me this now? Back then, it would have been a very useful piece of information.”
Content is important in information flows, but equally important is context. A key component in context is timing. Right timing = useful & actionable, poor timing = missed opportunity, frustration, or outright laughter.
Full story in NY Times.
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2 comments:
How insightful and how true. There is a certain motion and momentum that is inherent in vibrant networks. Too often networks are measured by mechanics and attributes of members.
But content without timing and context can be empty. Timing is so important in all parts of life.
It is such a pleasure to visit this blog and pick up your insights. Very helpful.
Hi Vladis!
I resonated with this: "People want to be associated with fame & recognition, even if they do not get it themselves."
It has been a wonderful learning journey to form a group at the end of CCK08 course. All this hidden agendas come into play, I'm having so much fun!
Reaching desitions in a connective way is very hard by itself, we are used to give orders or to follow them or something in between but to interact and reach desitions with openess, autonomy, diversity and connectednes is a different story.
What I see is that it is not important to create a beautiful, unquestionable, academic, patterned or whatever final video. I don't care about the end product that has so much weight on the credit. I care about the process, how are we connecting, how do we react to opposition, how do we divide the work, how do we avoid the individual, are we letting go of control?
Of course tha context has ALL to do here. If I consider myself a node well conected, recognized, even followed... I care about the end product! My reputation is in the middle!
Besides, as far as I understand, we are the only group that formed out of the remaining active participants so the weight feels diferent. Nooooo, we have to make a Nobel Prize winner video, we are 4 nodes! We must be able to produce an oustanding final video.
I repeat, I'm having so much F.U.N!
Thanks for sharing!
Have a nice weekend!
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