Jeremy Zawodny’s blog: Knowledge Worker or Google Hound?

This is a great article. I think that (or would hope that) all of us are an amalgamation of both–that through our searching we’ve actually assimilated our findings into knowledge, but i have friends who always big up me on my skill for just finding nearly anything pertaining to the topic on-hand, on line. I’m generally the resident authority when it comes to looking something up, and find it a challenge when someone says “i looked for it on the web but i couldn’t find it”.

in his book, Agile Software Development, Alistair Cockburn spends some time in a section on Failure Modes, addressing specifically “Inventing Rather Than Researching” as a failure mode, and i’ve definitely noticed this pattern in many places, that people put such an emphasis on “originality”, that folks who know how to properly piece together different components are looked down upon. I definitely carry this stigma, coming from a hip hop background, where “biting” is anathema, but i’ve had to really realize that most of the time, there is a job to do, so however you do it (aside from violating intellectual property rights, as the book mentions) really shouldn’t matter (in many cases) as long as you get it done.

I think that last part about IP, however, is what has many folks scared to simply put together different components, or “borrow” work to achieve goals, though…we are definitely in an age where, like the old musicians who started cracking down on sampling, folks is broke, and need to find every avenue they can to make money, so you have folks (over?)scrutinizing work so that it doesn’t “infringe” on “IP”…

and now i begin to ramble, so i’m cutting it short (i am by no means a writer:).