A miserable posting from Richard MacManus : Mama don't let your baby grow up to be a Generalist :-(

Ok, maybe there's a Friday Five style question to be asked here. If you were to specialize your blog to be about three things, what would they be?

For example, I'd like to say something like :

- AltMoney

- Pattern Languages for internet culture (which would include both the social and technical patterns)

- "Smart Disorganized Individuals" and the tools they need.

But, of course, these are only really interesting to me because I don't really know much about them, hence writing and thinking about them is an exercise in personal learning.

Being a good specialist means becoming an expert means stopping discovering and starting to simply apply (well) what you already know. Which is, of course, dull as ditchwater.

But now I have an idea for a new kind of YASN. A network of recovering generalists, each of who promises to specialize in a limited number of specific topics. However, the twist is, no two people can own the same topic. So if MacManus has bagged "Strategy" and "Knowledge Management" then no one else can have them.

Or maybe there are some rules for how other recovering generalists can buy or win ownership of certain topics. Or how topics can get subdivided. But generally, ownership of topic namespace would force the specialization.

Hence the YASN as a whole becomes a kind of competitive network or recommendation architecture.