spark plugs

I have been giving some thought to what I want to do with the rest of my life lately. I think the answer lies in a futuristic sci-fi book I read more than 10 years ago, but which has evidently left an indelible mark on my pscyhe because I still remember the title and author to this day. The book is Dream Thief, by Stephen Lawhead. The person it describes is as follows:

"You flatter me, Adjani," roared Packer, his teeth flashing white from out of the auburn tangle of his beard. He said to Spence, "Adjani here is under no one's supervision. The man has not yet been born who can keep up with him, and he does not know how to take direction" ... Turning once more to Spence he explained, "Adjani is our spark plug - and the best in the business."

Spence looked at the slim Adjani with new respect. A Spark Plug, as they were called, was a member of an elite group of men and women so gifted as to be completely expert in numerous fields of study - as many as five or six. Whereas most scientists or thereticians were specialists, training their professional vision to ever narrower bands of the scientific spectrum, those like Adjani - and there were very few of them - worked in reverse, enlarging the scope of their knowledge wider and wider. In effect, they were specialists in everything: physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, metallurgy, psychology, and all the rest.

... They acted as catalysts of creativity - spark plugs - providing those quick, dynamic bursts of creative insight for projects that had grown too complex to rely on the accidental cross-pollination of ideas from other disciplines.

In a new world economy, Spark Plugs will become essential as human repositaries of knowledge. Some companies invest millions of dollars trying to structure their corporate databases to capture all the organisational knowledge. Others use search engines to harvest infinite streams of unstructured data like the internet. And finally, there is the human brain - the enigma, that intuitively cuts through the most complex problems, yet forgets the most miniscule details.

I want my brain to grow big big, and besides this is a lovely reason to stay in school longer. One PhD after another ...