Let’s not be complacent about our ignorance!
My mother encouraged me to read and learn. But she cautioned me, “The more you learn the less you will know.” That was her way of saying that learning opens whole domains about which we were previously ignorant and shows us how much more there is to learn.
An estimate by Google illustrates the impossible challenge of knowing everything: As of 2015, 134,021,533 unique book titles had been published since Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. 1 Based on a UNESCO estimate that 2,200,000 new book titles are now being published annually worldwide, that means that there now are more than 145 million different books that we could read! 2
Face it: We can’t keep up!
How can we be expected to keep up with this torrent when, on average, Americans only read 12 books a year and when more than a quarter of Americans don’t read any books at all? 3
Do you think turning to the Internet is part of the answer?
It's true that we are spending more and more time on our devices, 6 hours and 42 minutes a day on average in the U.S and even more in some countries, much of it seeking and consuming information. 4 Daily web searches on Google alone total 5.8 billion, which equates to 2 trillion Google searches per year worldwide. 5
But our web searches are not scratching the surface of what’s posted on websites. The indexed World Wide Web contains at least 5.27 billion pages. 6 This estimate does not include non-indexed pages and pages on the deep web which search engines will not pick up. There could be as many as 15 trillion web pages on the internet if both indexed and non-indexed, that is, surface and deep web pages, are counted. 7
While one could assume that much of this information is duplicative and trivial, no doubt that some of it is unique and substantive.
The growth of scientific knowledge is accelerating
One indicator of the growth of knowledge is offered by the explosive growth in scientific papers and citations in these papers. A study of the number of papers cited between 1908 and 2012 and their age suggests that global scientific output is increasing 8% to 9% annually and, thus, scientific knowledge is doubling every nine years. 8 And this growth has accelerated: The study looked at the rate at which science has grown in terms of number of publications and cited references since the mid-1600s. The researchers “identified three growth phases in the development of science, which each led to growth rates tripling in comparison with the previous phase: from less than 1% up to the middle of the 18th century, to 2 to 3% up to the period between the two world wars and 8 to 9% to 2012.” 9
Think about it: If you graduated from high school just nine years ago, you are now faced with double the amount of scientific knowledge than your high school classes potentially considered!
What can we do about our growing ignorance?
Here’s my list.
Read, listen, and watch.
That’s obvious. Not so much the TMZ celebrity news. but articles, reports, videos, shows, and books that talk about trends and forecasts, discoveries and new ideas, ways that society and science are changing.
Tap other minds.
Associate with others who are curious and looking for clues about what’s important to pay attention to and how the world is changing. If you have friends who have different interests and perspectives, so much the better: They will be curating different information streams and will bring important signs and signals to your attention.
Hang out in groups.
Think of your groups as your connection and information magnifiers.
According to research by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, on average, our tightest layer of connections includes just five people – loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 good friends, 50 friends, 150 meaningful contacts, 500 acquaintances, and 1,500 people you can recognize. Over time, people move into and out of our layers of connections, but the scale of each layer does not substantially change. 10
Averages hardly tell the whole story, but Dunbar’s theory is useful in illustrating the value of hanging out in groups. If we spend time in a group of eight diverse people, we potentially then have exposure to 40 loved ones of group members, 120 good friends of group members, 400 friends of group members, 1,200 meaningful contacts of group members, and 12,000 acquaintances of group members. No matter if some of these contacts are duplicated, that’s a powerful set of up to 13,760 people we potentially can tap! (And they have their networks which we potentially can tap, as well.)
Obviously, these people know things, things that we don’t know, things that potentially have given them an edge and can give us an edge.
Be a network broker.
The value of being connected grows when one's connections spread across different groups.
Research by Ronald Stuart Burt, a professor at my alma mater, the University of Chicago, shows that people who connect across groups have information, timing and arbitrage advantages that make them more likely to detect and develop rewarding opportunities. 11
Burt’s concept is that the similarity or homogeneity of information, new ideas, and behavior is generally higher within a group than between two groups. If you act as a mediator between two or more closely connected groups of people - thereby bridging the “structural holes” between the groups - you potentially gain important advantages. Being a bridge between distinct groups allows you to transfer or “gatekeep” valuable information from one group to another. And you have the possibility of combining the ideas you receive from sources in different groups to come up with the most innovative idea of all. 12
“Network brokers" tend to be better compensated, more positively evaluated, more likely candidates for senior positions, and more recognized as leaders in their organization and industry. On average, they are 50% more successful than those who do not engage in brokering between groups but just interact with individuals like themselves.
There you have it: Group up!
In my work coaching groups of leaders, I see the powerful effects of group engagement on opening minds, injecting new ideas, giving participants new growth paths, and enabling them to leverage the time and resources they already have invested in their businesses and careers.
So, indeed, group up! A good place to start is in a coached group of diverse business owners, leaders, professionals, and entrepreneurs. Consider how working with the group members and the coach can offer you new perspectives and knowledge, and thereby fuel your professional and personal growth. Dunbar’s law will be working for you, and, if you are active in other groups, as well, you will accrue even greater benefits from bridging the groups and being a “super connector.”
References:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/85305/how-many-books-have-ever-been-published
https://www.worldometers.info/books/
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/
https://thenextweb.com/tech/2019/01/31/study-shows-were-spending-an-insane-amount-of-time-online/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-search-statistics
https://www.worldwidewebsize.com/
https://www.soscanhelp.com/blog/dark-web-vs.-deep-web-whats-the-difference
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/05/global-scientific-output-doubles-every-nine-years.html
https://www.zbw-mediatalk.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/1402.4578.pdf
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships
Burt, R.S. (2004). "Structural Holes and Good Ideas." American Journal of Sociology. 110 (2): 349–399. ISSN 0002-9602. doi:10.1086/421787
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_holes
