Do you mean that such a Renaissance doc this is not a good thing? I think this is exactly the sort of doctors we need.
Right now, my father has diabetes t2, high bp, a slightly enlarged prostrate gland, a series of UTIs, hernia, skin rashes and probably a few other things. He's fairly rigorous in researching & learning about his conditions. But no doc he consults takes an overall picture of his health. You have nephrologist, urologist, cardiologist and so on. They tend to miss things among themselves until he reminds them.
Yes medicine has advanced greatly but a renaissance doc would be transformative for people like him.
A few surgeries, treatments and lifestyle interventions can do it. Though it's not an easy task. And further, not a cheap one. Treatments tend to synergize.
There's so many specialized doctors.
The generalist is called a general practitioner, but commonly reduced to a specialist in ENT infections.
He will probably still be the most influential and the most important entrepreneur in our lifetime, and I mean that mostly in a technological sense. But he's certainly not a kind of person I would emulate and not all his business strategy are advisable or necessarily efficient.
Anyway, to credit Elon Musk almost singularly with SpaceX and other big accomplishment does a discredit to the engineers who work there. What he provide is leadership, which means making final engineering decisions and taking responsibility for these decisions.
We often became complacent, unwilling to take even modicum of risk on a project, or only paying attention narrowly to a certain measure of success. Musk exemplify the lack of complacency better than anyone else.
As for success, his skill is con artistry over investors. Also known as venture capitalism. He invented nothing and will continue to invent nothing.
Anyone can decide things that do not actually matter with aides that can make things work. He didn't even pick the aides in case of Tesla and SpaceX so does not get thw credit for that.
The guy is not exactly a good strategist considering how many of ventures needed to fulfill his dystopian vision failed.
Why is it dystopian? It's full of people laboring alone and separated in virtual cellars. Every thing he does is an enclosure: a dome, a car with no driver, a rocket. To compensate you get to sit in a VR helmet and interact with a robot.
Musk is good at conning folks with tales of magic money and robots.
He's vulture capital through and through.
It's not that specialization is junk or good, it is that we get complacent.
For example, I dabbled with programming and computery stuff all my life. I like to think I am pretty good myself. It is not until a few years ago that I started taking improv classes, a form of theater that I began finding something else that I am really good at. Today, I continue to deepen my technical expertise. Not so much in programming, but in electronics, 3D printing, and CAD. However, I will eventually return to programming to expand my skillset there. In the performing art, I am pursuing voice acting.
There's paying works in voiceacting for sure. Even improv has potential for paying work if I bother to teach a class or coach a team. Money isn't why I pursue these disciplines. I found that I am getting stagnant in my acting skill, so I decided to do something new.
Specialization isn't a bad thing, but it pays to continually expand your skill in both breadth and depth. Not just learn the 15th new framework hotness or wahtever. It might even pay to do something that could be the furthest away from your expertise.
Fact: people are better educated today. It's more common to have a university degree than half a century ago (yet unlike decades ago, not to have it count for much).
Speaking of which, being Renaissance is a nice hobby, but it doesn't pay. That's why most people specialize.
Some people like specializing. Spheres of human activity and interest are like fractals. When you specialize and zoom in, you see rich details. Look how diverse computing is.
If you are in computing, to an outsider you seem like a "computer specialist", but within that sphere, you could be a generalist with diverse areas of interest.
Probably the best way to explain that to people might be by analogy to doctors. Imagine someone being a brain surgeon also interested in the heart, kidneys and urinary tract, nose-throat-ears, ... that's a Renaissance Doc.
Some people have one hobby different from their job, maybe two. They specialize off duty, so to speak. They pursue that hobby or two and are good at then, and don't want to take on more at the expense of neglecting what they are good at.
> America is increasingly becoming a bifurcated, two-tiered society of a specialized government-corporate-media-political-credentialed class of degreed overseers and managers who attempt to micromanage an increasingly less well-educated, dependent underclass.
This Musk adulation really takes away from the article. Musk took over Twitter so that he could control tweets that were critical of him, and amplify his own tweets. He knew he would lose billions of dollars in doing so by devaluing the platform, but it was worth it in his eyes.