In a world that doesn’t change too fast, a brief childhood of exploration would give you all the information you would need to deal with the various norms around you and with the decision-making patterns that are likely to arise. But in a culture that is increasingly networked, doubling the amount of information produced every few years, there can no longer be a difference between the exploration and the exploitation phase.
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”