I’m not really sure what I was getting at now really, I suppose I’m trying to figure out why these different fields attract different sorts of people, and how I see the need for more of a mix. It’s nice to have some feedback to help work it out a bit :)

Networks will “deal with” such people while trees have a much harder time with them. A section of a company might function as a network still, of course.

As I see it your post relates more to the difference between a network and a tree than to the difference between the artistic, academic and commercial worlds. The downside to networks is of course how they scale.

I guess the problem I have is with the artist-as-genius myth, which is more or less absent from the more obscure scenes that we’re fortunate enough to be involved in :)

It’s likely different for very famous artists, who can afford to be very individualist but for others it’s hard to get a foot in the door of larger events and often that would lead to a context for the works that the artist himself would be less happy with.

That situation in turn leads to people with very diverse skill-sets aside from their specialities. Aside from playing music or setting up PA’s I may end up doing stage-management or even work the bar, set up lighting or be a doorman at a given night, this isn’t unusual at all in my social circle. What might be most interesting here from the perspective that you are talking from is that it makes it quite likely that two people who need to reach some sort of agreement quickly under pressure and in chaotic conditions will have done the other person’s task on some other night, leading to more understanding. This also leads to groups that can be very effective in very small teams, decreasing the need for lots of individual fame as the income can be split over less people.

Things seem to vary widely depending on the field though. It’s related to open access in a way – physics, biology and bioinformatics seem to embrace it while only one of the top ranking computer science journals even has an open access policy. If publication and peer review was faster, and available online by default, I think the situation would improve.

The main time when I see secrecy and distrust is when there’s a patent involved, which is for obvious reasons and nothing specific to academia. I’ve seen this a couple of times, when a free-flowing academic chat hits a wall of “we’ve got a patent application underway so I’d better not say much about that”. It’s fine, I’ve nothing against patents in general (although software patents and other specifics of current patent systems are damaged…).

So I wonder if you could say a bit more about how/when a secretive attitude shows itself in academia?