The article itself does not seem to support the headline. It is about lots of individual geniuses, but not about whether they are overrated or not. In fact, the words "overrated" and "lone" do not even appear in the whole article, except for the title. "Genius" appears once.
The headline is Jeffrey Goldberg's (provocative) restatement of Walter Isaacson's themes in the book (and also Walter's answers from the interview at the end of the article). I assume the journalist took liberties to write "lone geniuses are overrated" because Isaacson highlighted:
1) teams
2) lesser known individuals who didn't have celebrity status of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc
I guess one would have to read the entire book instead of an excerpt to judge if the journalist's "lone geniuses overrated" is a fair TLDR of Isaacson's book.
Lone geniuses or simply those with the best marketing and ability to exploit the efforts of others and the general technology landscape? I guess you could argue that many of these innovators are not technical geniuses but in fact business geniuses operating in technology.
Certainly not Isaacson, that's the whole point of the article. But us, the reader? I would think not, the hypermajority of the progress we see is clearly the result of teams. Sole founders of no-employee companies are slightly unusual, but no where near the extremely unusual sight of a purely independent solo researcher. Governments, industry and research, all dominated by group work.
A lot of people are saying the title is clickbait. I certainly agree it fails to even allege Lone Geniuses are Overrated -- and so it massively fails to live up to it's promise.
I've read about 80% of the first page and scrolled the rest of it. Nowhere it seemed as if anything in the article talks about lone geniuses being overrated. Why choose such a title?
100 times this. I excitedly read the article expecting a clear concise explanation ( albeit one with bad premises ) explaining how lone geniuses only accomplish things through others, and that they can be done without. The article fails to deliver on this title entirely.
>One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs—who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American —is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government.
I read the article till I encountered this. I guess some people may be able to parse this in one pass. So just wanted to ask: does anyone feel any enjoyment when he/she encounters such a statement?
> Does anyone feel any enjoyment when he/she encounters such a statement?
It's impossible to read in a leisurely manner for me as well. But I do have good news: Far fewer writers do this than in the past.
Here's a sentence from the first page of "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens:
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
A wordy tedious style was common in the past -- at least from what I've read. I think that most people write way more clearly and simply these days than they did 100-200 years ago. This applies to news reports, novels, advertisements, and even academic papers.
That's gold! Sentences like that are WHY I read Dickens. Its like a conversation with the character. So much more humanity and humor in there than "He says, then she says, then we go there" style so popular now.
It's just periodic paragraphs in Dickens. He is kinda showing off that he can make the whole paragraph make sense.
WHETHER I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the day and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verifed or falsified by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
It is not that modern writing is more clear or in any way better than the styles of the past, it is more often the case that the audience for a modern author is a barely educated simpleton who has a hard time keeping track of a sentence with more than one subordinate clause. The problem is not with Dickens...
"Barely educated simpleton" is unnecessarily harsh. Historically speaking, living in an era with majority literacy is unusual (so as to dodge questions about the "true" level of modern literacy), as is living in an era with large numbers of people with the free time to read anything.
It is true that Dickens could assume a somewhat higher level of IQ in his readers of the time than we can today in books targeted for the "average" reader, but I think most of us would consider that an unfortunate thing if we really thought about it, rather than a virtue of the age.
If you want challenging books, there's no shortage of them today. You just need to know where to look.
Also, distraction. It doesn't matter how smart your readers are, if they only read your books 5 minutes at a time while on the shitter, you have better written simply.
The beauty of good writing is the ability of the author to state things simply without requiring the reader to meander through all the half-filled closets of the author's mind.
Horses for courses. I don't enjoy overly complex business-speak but I do sometimes like reading novels where you even have to refer to footnotes to fully understand the word plays and cultural/historical connotations. Certain writers would have spent days and weeks crafting a single sentence to perfection and I appreciate the effort.
Funnily enough, you can mark a stark difference between the Dickens example and the paragraph from GP. Dickens is easy to read and understand despite meandering, the GP example is not.
A mix of context and content. We are not reading this article for pleasure, but for information, so give us the information! Like this:
Isaacson’s latest book is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. This is surprising given it comes after his biography of Steve Jobs, who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American
This puts the meat of the sentence up front and loses the passive participle ("coming") which is weak and awkward. The second sentence could be a subordinate clause (", which is surprising...") but given the author thought the factor of surprise strong enough to lead with it should likely stand on its own. Using "feature" is unnecessary, and as the Bible (Strunk & White) tells us, "eliminate unnecessary words".
The Dickens sentence tells us what its about ("the hour of my birth") up front, tells us the source of the information, then tells us the information, which if we didn't source would seem simply ridiculous. By telling us the source first we learn something of the narrator's character as both a bit of a skeptic and keen observer of the less skeptical amongst us.
This is like complaining about the difference between Perl and Java. Use the right tool for the job. I for one relish the kind of writing that used to be normal before WW1 and Hemingway. I also like Hemingway and newer writing.
Maybe the writing asked more of the reader in the past because it was a proportionally larger share of their attention, in the days before electronic media.
"In einem bei Jena liegenden Dorf, erzählte mir, auf einer Reise nach Frankfurt, der Gastwirth, daß sich mehrere Stunden nach der Schlacht, um die Zeit, da das Dorf schon ganz von der Armee des Prinzen von Hohenlohe verlassen und von Franzosen, die es für besetzt gehalten, umringt gewesen wäre, ein einzelner preußischer Reiter darin gezeigt hätte; und versicherte mir, daß wenn alle Soldaten, die an diesem Tage mitgefochten, so tapfer gewesen wären, wie dieser, die Franzosen hätten geschlagen werden müssen, wären sie auch noch dreimal stärker gewesen, als sie in der That waren."
"Wenn sie nach viel gemachten Anstalten und Zurüstungen, sobald es zum Zweck kommt, in Stecken gerät, oder, um diesen zu erreichen, öfters wieder zurückgehen und einen andern Weg einschlagen muß; imgleichen wenn es nicht möglich ist, die verschiedenen Mitarbeiter in der Art, wie die gemeinschaftliche Absicht erfolgt werden soll, einhellig zu machen: so kann man immer überzeugt sein, daß ein solches Studium bei weitem noch nicht den sicheren Gang einer Wissenschaft eingeschlagen, sondern ein bloßes Herumtappen sei, und es ist schon ein Verdienst um die Vernunft, diesen Weg womöglich ausfindig zu machen, sollte auch manches als vergeblich aufgegeben werden müssen, was in dem ohne Überlegung vorher genommenen Zwecke enthalten war."
I feel as much enjoyment as I would with any other moderately interesting statement. I have no trouble parsing it, so I don't consciously notice anything about its structure. I think requiring writers to always use short sentences would make many articles worse, by forcing them to express the same ideas in a more verbose way.
I must be slow. I had quite a bit of trouble reading it. I counted 8 disparate ideas in that one sentence. I had to read it 4 times to actually understand everything.
I parsed it in one pass (don't have strong feelings for pleasure or pain on it). It's not the best sentence ever, but I don't really see the problem with it. To find out, how about we try to say the same thing in a different style:
>Issaacson's book is surprising, because his last book was about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was portrayed in that book as a radical and congenitally irascible individual. The kind we think of as totally "American". Now, since Isaacson's book was kind to Jobs, we might think that he is in favor of such an individualistic understanding of genius. It is thus surprising that his new book strongly praises the virtue of three ideas: (1) cooperation in general, (2) the idea that collective effort has a multiplicative result from its individual parts, and (3) the way that industry, academia, and government can work together with exceptional results. These are antithetical to the myth of the lone genius that appears in the Jobs book. So, like we said, it's surprising.
.....
All he's saying here is that he's surprised because one book seemed to argue for the individual, and this new one argues for collective effort. I, for one, find his version easy to read, and my version to be easy to understand, but boring. You'll also notice it's not actually any shorter, and I find that breaking things into short sentences gets more tedious to read than a long, well-formed sentence. It forces you to really be pedantic, like with my closing sentence - which was necessary to tie all those individual short sentences together. In a long sentence, those are just subclauses, so you don't have be repetitious about the hierarchy of meaning.
> Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after
This is the part that tripped me up at first. I kept grokking that as the his book being named Coming (and that the quote just had a capitalization error). This didn't make sense:
> One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, <TITLE>, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs
Other than that you just break it down like this:
1. The stuff between the emdashes is just an aside. It could have been in paranthesis, thought I'm not hip to the finer points of when to separate with dashes vs. parenthesis. So you could rewrite it like this:
> One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs (who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American) is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government.
Or even remove it entirely:
> One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs, is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government.
2. Those last clauses are just a list of ideas that are tied to the book. You could just grok it like so:
> One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs, is that it is a paean <LIST OF "to ..." CLAUSES EXPRESSING IDEAS IN THE BOOK>.
This kind of sentence is par for the course in (my native) Portuguese. I have to consciously break down sentences when writing in English, to the point that my discourse in written English sometimes sounds, to me, too "stop and go". As such, I am used, and enjoy, such long, diverging, sentences.
To each his own, I guess. Both formats have strengths and weaknesses. Simple sentences, in logical form, are easier to parse and make it easier to follow the "formal"(ish) proof. Complex sentences more closely grasp and transmit divergent thought processes, where you attack related avenues of thought at the same time you are making the main point.
I don't think one option can be graded as better than the other. Use a hammer on nails, fetch a screwdriver for screws.
I kind of feel like this is an old fashioned style of writing. I enjoy simple conversational style more, though it's not exactly painful to read this.
It just takes more concentration than it should to understand. I don't see the benefit over breaking it up. Also, that disembodied tense is a little harder to connect to. Just narrate the damn paragraph. This long sentence makes you forget that he's trying to contrast something.
One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs—who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American —is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 1 sentence
Issacson's new book follows his biography of Steve Jobs who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American. In contrast, 'The Innovators' is a paean to cooperation, the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 2 sentences, shorter
The Innovators follows Issacson's popular biography of the famously brilliant-but-belligerent Steve Jobs. His new book praises different virtues: the force-multiplication power of collective effort and the transformative power of industry, academia and government working together. - shorter & flatter
The Innovators follows Issacson's popular biography of Steve Jobs. It's an interesting contrast. Steve jobs was famous for both his belligerence and his brilliance. He is presented as an archetypical a lone genius. His new book is different. It praises cooperation and the the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort. Interestingly, the book even emphasizes the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 6 sentences, more narration. Tells you what it's trying to tell you.
Before seeing your reply, I did a similar "alternate version" write up. I disagree that the long sentence makes you forget he's trying to contrast something. There's a built in hierarchy in the grammar itself that tells you this is all tied together (in a comparison). I find that short, rapidfire sentences makes me lose track of the controlling idea easier.
Edited to add: How many times do you have to repeat that each sentence is continuing the thought: "This is interesting..." "His new book is different..."
... Your example isn't hard to read, either. But it's hard to say that it's more concise and precise.
I find long sentences make me lose the nuance unless I devote a lot of attention, like reading a textbook. I don't think it's about the length itself but the point of view or something. It seems like long sentences are a byproduct of a very removed style of writing. I associate it with old fashioned professorial essay writing. Almost like a dictionary.
I think a more narrative or opinionated style is easier to follow because you can "see" the writer. He's trying to tell us that the new book has a different perspective than the old one and how that difference emerges. 'The new book is different from the old one, here's why.' He's almost trying to contain the (contrasting) perspective of the previous book and some more information about the author within the definition of the new book. 'The new book contrasts with the last book in its...'
The narrator just uses shorter sentences. 'The word philanthropist is usually used to describe ___...' Usually used to describe ___, the word philanthropist..' You can tell which sentence will be more complicated.
It is the natural language equivalent of using a complex, "clever" expression in code instead of multiple, simple expressions. If the goal is to be as clear as is possible, keep it simple. In works that are intended to be appreciated on an artistic level, I don't mind some meandering and flourish.
Maybe the author intended to filter his readers. Maybe he wanted the readers to switch to serious reading and comprehending mode. Writers do not always engage the maximal readership but sometimes they may not wish to do so either.
It's not particularly hard to read, but it does partake of the cringey middlebrowness that shows up fairly often in the article. It was the barn-raisings that did for me.
It's like they're trying to cargo cult the postmodern literary criticism they studied at university but they didn't have a big enough dictionary to hand to create the right effect.
Irascible, paen... where's the melioristic, where's the recherché. Must try harder.
I really don't enjoy seeing a single sentence with this many unnecessary commas or two em dashs. This is a 'grammar smell' just as obviously as when we see blatant code smells.
