In my book, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas To Non-technical Decision Makers, I discuss problems common but unique to technology experts. I would like to consider one problem here and get your feedback.
Outside their own specific area of expertise, many technology wizards lack an ego. Here is the observation. When technologists are talking about things in their field, either networking, electronics, web design, medical, or whatever, they are Chatty Cathy’s and go on and on and on. (Usually to the point of exasperation on the part of the audience, but that is not the focus of today’s discussion.) They exhibit high egos and often a sense of superiority.
However, what I would like to point out is that many of them, once outside their technology domain, are unsure, timid, withdrawn, and reticent. I posit that this arises from their innate selection of science or technology as their chosen field. Science and mathematics are exact. There are correct answers. There is a right and a wrong. To the wizard technologist, this is a compass, a guidepost, and an anchor for safe harbor. They know what to do because they know what is right.
Even with random events like radioactivity or the distribution of energy states at equilibrium, the physicist attempts to understand this by what specifying what will statistically happen. Scientists model the statistics of the events and predict the probability of occurrence, not of the individual particle, but the ensemble behavior. Even though all the events are random, there is still this element of control that statistical mechanics brings. Technologists still know what is right, predictable, and controllable.
Outside their technology domains, the world is subjective and indeterminate. I believe that this indeterminate randomness drains the ego from the technologist–there is no map or compass–so the net result is to be uncertain, taciturn, and withdrawn.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this particular observation: Whydo so many technology wizards have exalted egos when talking about technology and such debased egos outside their technology? Why?