The start of something...

The title of this entry was going to be, "The start of something beautiful", but after thinking about it, the decision was made to change the title to, "The start of something..." because at the beginning of such an endeavor how can anyone ever make such a statement. This could turn out to be something much less than beautiful and if so how would I ever be able to look myself in the mirror again? Anyhow, (for my friend who says I use that word all the time) let’s get to today’s discussion.

Buttermilk

You may ask, what does this have to do with anything? To which I reply, nothing, it's just a word.

To get things started I copied and pasted my part of a discussion from my Facebook page as I will do periodically when I want to delve deeper into a subject.

"An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less." - Nicholas Murray Butler

To become a real expert in any one area, a person needs to devote so much time working on their specialty that they neglect other areas of their lives. I think the expression in the Information Technology field is called Drilling Down. "When one drills down, one performs de facto data analysis on a parent attribute.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill_down

In other words, they go from a broad overview of a subject to the narrowest definition, breaking their subject down bit by bit until it is totally deconstruction and each part explained in detail.

I've known many people who claimed to be experts in my time but very few who really were true EXPERTS. True EXPERTS are the ones whom we sometimes refer to as the absent minded professors, when in reality they were so focused on their work that every day cares of the world are of no consequence to them.

Here is the thing, being an EXPERT doesn't mean you have ALL of the answers to ALL of the questions because in order for that to be so you would have to be able to ask and answer every conceivable question anyone in past or future generations could every formulate and that is an impossibility.

We all know someone who despite being an EXPERT, in their field, was later proven to be mistaken. We can't say they were wrong in their analysis because many times they had the right answers but the wrong questions.

It’s sad to know that some men and women spend their lives digging, in the wrong hole, only to find out later that the gem for which they were searching was found lying on top of the ground in plain sight, just a few feet away. DC10