... a tough time doing his job. But drop him into the Federal Reserve 40 years ago, and a lack of skill with the slide rule could put an equal crimp on his career.
Intelligence, as it impacts the economist Valderrama, is our capacity to adapt and thrive in our own environment. In a Darwinian sense, it's as true now as it was millions of years ago, when man's aptitude for hearing the way branches broke or smelling a spore affected his power to avoid predators, eat and survive.
But what makes someone smart can vary in different cultures and situations. A successful Wall Street banker who has dropped into the Australian Outback would be unlikely to pull off a great Crocodile Dundee impression. A mathematical genius like Isaac Newton could be — in fact, he was — socially inept and a borderline hermit. A master painter? Probably not so good at balancing a cheque book.
What's undeniable is the Internet's democratisation of information. It's providing instant access to information and, in a sense, improving the practical application of intelligence for everyone.
Nearly a century ago, Henry Ford didn't have the Internet, but he did have a bunch of smart guys. The auto industry pioneer, as a parlour trick, liked to claim he could answer any question in 30 minutes. In fact, he had organised a research staff he could call at any time to get him the answer.
Today, you don't have to be an auto baron to feign that kind of knowledge. You just have to be able to type G-O-O-G-L-E. People can in a matter of minutes find sources of information like court documents, scientific papers or corporate securities filings.
"The notion that the world's knowledge is literally at your fingertips is very compelling and is very beguiling," said Vint Cerf, who co-created TCP/IP and who is widely considered one of the Internet's "fathers". What's exciting, according to Cerf, "is the Internet's ability to absorb such a large amount of information and for it to be accessible to other people, even if they don't know it exists or don't know who you are."
Indeed, Doug Engelbart, one of the pioneers of personal computing technology in the 1960s, envisioned in the early '60s that the PC would augment human intelligence. He believes that society's ability to gain insight from information has evolved with the help of computers.
"The key thing about all the world's big problems is...
For more, click here...
