[MD] Memes and themes of community dances

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[John]
*"Innovation* has always been a group activity. The myth of the lone genius
having a eureka moment that changes the world is indeed a myth. Most innovation
is the result of long hours, building on the input of others. Ideas spawn from
earlier ideas, bouncing from person to person and being reshaped as they go.

[Arlo]
If you haven't read "A People's History of Science", you should give it a
browse. This is pretty much the starting point of that book, and its a fun
read. 

This view also resonates with what Mikhail Bakhtin calls "ventriloquation",
namely that everything that is said is said as part of a historical dialogue,
always in response to what has been said, and always in anticipation of how
others may respond, never as a "soliloquy".

I think this is supported by Pirsig's notion that intellectual patterns come
from social patterns, not from biological patterns. It is sociality that
gives(gave) rise to intellectual activity. 

And, I think this also explains why when you look at "innovations" you see a
near always co-occurrence of "discoveries". At any given time, for example, the
current state of knowledge radiates probability fields, with certain things
nearly "inevitable" and other things highly probably that they will be
"discovered". It would absurd, for example, to think that if Edison had never
been born we'd still be reading by candlelight, or if Ford had never been born
there would be no factories. 

A friend of mine refers to this as a marathon, we credit the "winner" (as
defined by "first"- usually to patent) but right behind that "winner" is a
crowd of others on the same path. And importantly we see that the "race" is an
orchestration of (social) forces that orders, drives and structures the race
towards that particular finish. 

This is not to demean the effort or skill of any individual runner. Indeed,
such things should be celebrated. But getting all hung up exclusively on "who
came in first" is a social level pattern, and I think this "celebrity" has been
what's fostered the "giants" view of history.