why i can't know everything anymore

I had an idea on the drive home that hints at my answer to Jeff Carr's question, "As technical writers, it seems we too often settle for being generalists. Perhaps we need to specialize more. What do you think??"

I was thinking about my interests in general and how these days it's really hard to keep up with the latest news and ideas about anything. When I was younger, lets mark this at the early days of the WWW, I was into a lot of different things. I still find the same topics interesting to this day: computers, music, technology, hard physical sciences, media, pop culture, the list goes on and on...

I loved to know a lot about a lot.

Fast forward 5-10 years, the present. I find it very hard to keep up with everything today, primarily because of how many people are engaged in the scene surrounding a unique focus. It's not necessarily the huge number of people, but that they are all connected via the Internet. Instantaneous knowledge transfer coupled with access for everyone who wants it is overwhelming us.

Because everyone can easily be an expert, i.e. the price of admission is an Internet connection, and you have to know more knowledge about a focus to feel merely competent, the bar has been raised for entry into the “I know a few things about X, Y, Z club.” Democratization of becoming knowledgeable in a focus also means that you are competing with endless numbers of experts, knowledgeable people, or even neophytes.

So I decided that even though it's hard, I have to reduce my interests these days because the time commitment required to being marginally involved in numerous focus scenes (even as a pure consumer) of information and knowledge would take up more hours of the day than exist. Keep in mind that I am married, and have my first child on the way!

Therefore, I think it is nearly impossible to be a generalist anymore. You could specialize your generality, but now I'm just playing rhetorical games :)

To tie this in, luckily when you go to work, the expectation is that you can handle a single job. But I think if you approach technical writing as a generalist, someone who can work in half a dozen fields, you will usually be passed over because someone out there has invested themselves more fully in a specialization than you have, whether by choice or luck.

In reality of course, a worker is also hired based on price, overall experience, ability to get along with the team, and a host of other criteria that have been around since the cube was invented. BUT, I don't think you should ever underestimate what a deciding factor specialized knowledge is when applying for a job.

I strongly believe that in some ways having a generalist's sense is a highly laudable technical writer attribute, but the speed at which business moves today mostly rewards "hit the ground running" ability over "grow with the company" ability.