Reflections 7th June

The Constant Beginner

We did everything that was asked of us. We chose a field, trained hard, joined a “good” institution, and spent two decades becoming reliably excellent at a defined thing. By every account of how a career was meant to work, we are a success. We are also among the most exposed people in the building. The institution that gave our skill its setting is being hollowed out from the inside, and the skill itself is losing its purchase faster than we can top it up.

We have not failed at anything; the ground we trained to stand on is moving beneath our feet.

There is a historical rhyme to this. When electric motors first reached factories, owners pulled out the steam engine, set a dynamo in its place, and changed nothing else: the central shaft, the drive belts, and the building linked to one source of power. For about thirty years the productivity gains barely showed. They arrived only when someone stopped treating the motor as a better engine and saw it as a different principle, a motor on eac…