M-Shaped Talent VS Chat-GPT

M-Shaped Talent VS Chat-GPT

My entire life has been shaped by art and science, but I’ve never really seen myself as an artist, and never felt compelled to go all-in on engineering. To be perfectly honest, being slightly obsessed with many aspects of work has helped shape how I move through the world, build companies, and it’s certainly had a hand in shaping my circle of friends and colleagues.

Being a multi-hyphenate is something I’ve aspired to become, and they’re the people that I’ve idolized for as long as I can remember. Few people capture this better than Leonardo Da Vinci, and after reading The Science of Leonardo by Fritjof Capra, it became clear to me that the people I’ve admired the most are not only the artists, but even more-so inspired by the scientists — the people embracing the idea of growing as both, leaning into their duality and wide-ranging interests, and being perfectly fine with being obsessed about all the creative nuances, and finding joy in the intellectually challenging technical prowess. Somewhere along the way, these m-shaped multi-hyphenate badasses have been rebranded as neurodivergent, trouble-makers, and myriad slides that discount their ability over singular-focused specialists.

What good is creativity if nobody sees it?

Is it even impactful if nobody talks about it?

Can you shape the zeitgeist in art alone... or is it the understanding of technology and distribution that ensures the idea is built to move through culture?

It’s a community like this — a subculture — that I’m excited to engage with, learn from, and continue to grow as a creative, technologist, futurist, creator, entrepreneur, designer, writer — all of it. I'm a forever learner, out of my league, always, and know that when I'm in the deep end and learning something new, it will make me stronger. So maybe this is my journey to learning how to grow in this direction.

I’ve found that multi-hyphenates are forged from a different fire. That sometimes that deep exploration is from instinct and not interest. Some of us use it to survive, and others may have understood from the jump that it meant becoming m-shaped talent in a world that could eventually collapse on specialization, and it’s happening.

Enter Large Language Models and Generative AI. All the information, none of the soul. All the technical data, with no point of view. All the speed and strength, none of the power to move people. Yet we hear virtually nothing about those with deep expertise going deep on wide-arrays of friends and interest — subjects matter experts, challenging the status quo.

The time for m-shaped talent to band together is now. The Da Vincis of today look more like collectives — a movement — where collective expertise comes together to solve problems with urgency, and leverage tools for immediacy, allowing people to move at the speed of culture.

This is what I see in subculture.

Community to study the science of art and study the art of science.