Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations IDIC - second-hand-tigers/badocter-career-learnings GitHub Wiki
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Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations (IDIC)
Star Trek: The Original Series, "Is There in Truth No Beauty?", television, 1968 (and many other episodes across several series)
IDIC is a Vulcan motto introduced in the original series episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty?"
MIRANDA: "The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity." SPOCK: "And the ways our differences combine to create meaning and beauty."
The motto is a founding principle of the United Federation of Planets (UFP) for which Vulcan, Earth, Tellar, and Andoria were the first member worlds after coming together to address a shared Romulan threat. The diversity of the UFP is presented as the key to it technologically and culturally outpacing the competing galactic empires often dominated by a single authoritarian planet.
How it relates to my approach to life and career
Growing up watching "Star Trek" in the 1970s was one of the motivating reasons I pursued engineering as a career. I wanted to be a part of the future that the show depicted and the only way that would happen is if enough of us pushed the frontiers of what was possible to progress toward that vision. Many of the devices we take for granted today were developed by individuals with that same motivation and commitment. Cell phones alone have surpassed communicators, tricorders, and computers depicted on the show, and even the $50K engineering workstations I did my graduate work on 30 years ago.
Over the course of my career, when technology and work processes still needed to be developed to accomplish the highest global priorities, those cases for action were brought before global communities of practice and an action team would step forward to meet that challenge. I never saw a team step forward where the members were all from one place, background, or experience level. Having different skills and perspectives is key for ideation and the team to land on the approach that best accomplishes the mission, and having a mix of early-, mid-, and late-career participants ensures that next-up team leads have been mentored to take over when the current generation of team leads retire.
References
Related: Mentoring Integration with Stage Development · Technical Career Stages
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