How a book about the history of information made me confront my own resistance to business—and why expertise isn’t what it used to be.

The Terribly Interesting World of Right Now

Depending on where you stand, this moment in history is either exhilarating or exhausting. Maybe both.

I’m halfway through James Gleick’s The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood—a book that traces how humans have shared knowledge, from drumbeats to Turing machines. It’s wild to think that Alan Turing, despite his tragic persecution, laid groundwork for the AI revolution we’re now drowning in. Which begs the question: How much will change in just one more year?

My Project: Learning to Sell What I’d Rather Study

Here’s a confession: I’ve spent years avoiding business and marketing. Why? Because I told myself I wasn’t good at it.

I’d much rather geek out over organic chemistry (shoutout to my NYU professor who got fired for grading too harshly—premed students were failing, and the university decided he was the problem). Or physics, where I’d mutter, When will I ever need to calculate velocity again?

But here’s the twist: My new project is marketing. Not because I love it, but because I’ve realized something terrifying: You don’t need a degree to be an expert anymore.

The Death of the Gray-Haired Expert

Gleick’s book highlights how isolated geniuses like Turing or Claude Shannon worked in near-obscurity. No LinkedIn. No trending hashtags. Just pure, slow-burning curiosity.

Now? A 22-year-old can call themselves a “founder” after one viral post. A fitness influencer with zero credentials can peddle 3-step weight-loss schemes to millions. And honestly? I’m equal parts jealous and furious.

• Jealous, because they’ve cracked the code of attention.
• Furious, because expertise feels like a relic.

Bill Gates recently mused that medicine and education might be “menial” in a decade. Excel formulas? Obsolete. Clinical trials? Analyzed by AI before the lab coats finish their coffee.

What’s left? Adapt or become a footnote.

Writing for the 7-Second Attention Span

Even my writing needed an overhaul. Did you know the New York Times aims for an 8th-grade reading level? Meanwhile, the average attention span is now shorter than a goldfish’s (7 seconds, to be exact).

So I’m learning to:

• Cut the jargon. (Sorry, organic chemistry.)
• Embrace simplicity. (No more H1-H4 Excel rants.)
• Hook fast or lose forever.

Start Small, Fail Fast, and Other Uncomfortable Truths

My takeaway? Stop avoiding what scares you. For me, it was marketing. For you? Maybe it’s coding, freelancing, or finally launching that side project.

The rules have changed:

• You don’t need 40 years in a field to be an expert.
• You do need to ship work, fail publicly, and iterate.
• And yes, sometimes you’ll need to learn from a 25-year-old “guru” who half-knows what they’re doing.

Final Thought: Are You Overwhelmed Too?

I’ll admit: Some days, the free webinars, the AI hype, the pressure to “build a personal brand”—it all makes me want to hide under a book (preferably one written before algorithms existed).

But then I remember: The flood of information won’t stop. So we might as well learn to swim.

What’s your current project? And how are you coping with the noise?