However, I think you stretch the point with regard to uniqueness. These days you can buy t-shirts that say “I’m unique. Just like everybody else.” I believe it’s an uncredited reference to a Ziggy cartoon, that lovable pop culture everyman. That’s the kind of talent that recruiting agencies colloquially known as “body shops” sell and the kind of talent that HR departments in large, complex organizations typically seem to sling their nets for. True uniqueness paired with Mozart or Einstein-like brilliance doesn’t generally fare well in such constructs.

However, it does exist. Perhaps it was easier in the 90′s for that kind of “talent” to flourish in its own small corporation consulting to the larger ones in the highly focused (and usually short term) engagements that best feed its own engine and provide the best, targeted benefit to such organizations.

Talent CAN be taught–to be sufficiently disciplined to engaged in a world that is not a consistent mirror of itself. If “Talent” is multi-talented, it can still hang out its shingle or partner up with a few like-minded “Talents” to form a self-supporting consortium that can effectively consult with the Big Boys.

I agree that the attitude you highlight above does relate to the reason innovation sputters in the USA. Many classes of, particularly, technical staff have seen their roles commidified and taken off shore. Well, do you know any blacksmiths? How about weavers? These are roles that have also been either structured out of the economy or automated or commidified.

“Talent” has its own responsibility for maximizing it’s potential. All the individuals sited above as examples of “Talent” made their own way in the world–usually against great odds.

And one more note: true “Talent” is not vocational in the modern sense of earning an income in a narrow sphere. True “Talent” is vocational in the broader sense and often results in creating a new, previously uncharted space for others to earn their living in.

If anyone sees himself as having “Talent,” it bears upon him to realize it or quite possibly he ends up joining the burgeoning ranks of mythopoetic Wounded Kings we have walking the earth today.

Peter, did you want to say something?

“Yes I do! That man is very smart to have such big thoughts. Can I ask that man a question?”

Yes, Peter. I’m sure he’ll answer you.

“What was the point, please, about computers and people? Is computers people or is people computers–or something like that?”

I think you might have missed my point.
The analogy while triggered by this lingustic discourse has nothing to do with languages, machine or otherwise. I just as aptly could apply marxist formulation of quantity transitioning into quality… (oh, and Marx stole it from Lao Tzu).

Would the writer care to consider common parlance versus the full scope of a given grammar, or even more simplistically, written versus spoken language. Methinks it might tire his brain.

The analogy was manfully attempted, but human language is always more complex that computer languages, and further, appropriately so because the human mind, and heart, evolves, while the typical IT system devolved until it must be recoded and replaced.

XP does not preclude thought and creativity; having two mediocre developers in pair programming does not automatically result in a beutiful code. But in some rare occasions it might be possible to have two (or more) programmers working on the code simultaneously and produce superb results.. Have to admit though that I haven’t seen it personally