The Stereotypes.
People in Tech, Geeks & Nerds Edition
A coder. Aha…
I can clearly see this beautiful mental picture that you are recreating in your head (because… oh YES! I know what you are thinking) when you heard the words “I am a coder”. This has been the carefully curated image that the media has imposed to society along the way.
But.. Why do we stereotype?
We stereotype because that reduces the energy needed by the brain to create classifications. Does it make sense?
Imagine if stereotypes wouldn’t exist.
Then the brain would need to continuously process all the inputs that we are facing during the day. This will require a huge amount of energy and thus we would be extremely tired (zombie vibes, anyone?).
Stereotypes act as mental buckets (as I like to call them). So when we see an image or listen to a concept we automatically position it in one of our buckets.
The fact that society has similar mental buckets have helped to achieve common understanding. That is why industries such as media and communications have a great power on how society behaves. They are the bucket makers, as I like to call them.
Stereotypes as a double edge weapon
While stereotypes helps us to reduce our brain energy consumed during the day, other not so desired benefits come from the art of stereotyping.
When humans see an image or a concept that do not corresponds to any of our mental buckets, we tend to automatically neglect it. This could not only lead to a subtle discrimination but also from a societal perspective, to a lack of innovation.
Innovative ideas do not come from the ordinary or the mundane. They come from combining elements that anybody else though it could be possible.
Steve Jobs may be the best example. Everybody recognises Steve by his role as one of the most brilliant tech innovators from the century. What few people know, is that he spent some good years practicing mediation, traveling to India and learning about the power of intuition. He was the ¨Flower Power¨ in a person. Sterotypes did not apply to them, and that enhanced his creativity to create Apple.
Why people in tech should break with Stereotypes?
The times of the Industrial Revolution are gone. Yup..! Gone.
We are now living in the digitalization era. This is the new revolution.
From now on, little kids will learn how to code in kinder garden and the fact that we can program in Python and know a couple of ML algorithms will not make us special anymore.
Then we need to bring to the table, that secret weapon that nobody knows better than ourselves: Our Creativity.
Creativity is an inherent characterstic of every human being and cannot be replaced by anybody. Creativity will help us to make better decisions, approach problems in a different way, create new solutions and innovate.
I can imagine in some years great coders being very recognized painters or fashion influencers? Imagine what great creations can come from combining the best of both worlds.
I would like to finish with some words of Steve himself:
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
— Steve Jobs
Thank you so much for reading me,
Till next time!
Love,
Mony
