First Time

I’ve always been fascinated by people who claim to be the first to do something.

“Oh he is always the first to discover a new book or a trend.” And for some reason people think that this is a sought-after trait.

I just fail to understand the importance of this trend. Why is it important, or desirable, that a person be the very first to read a new novel or see a current movie? What exactly does that really say about the person?

I’ve been racking my brain and I can’t come up with a good answer. I keep thinking that ten years down the line who will still care that this person was the first to have read a certain novel if by that point we’ve both read it? How does it matter that you went to Denmark before I did, if we’ve both been there?

I see the advice-oriented benefits to having already done something. If you’ve already been to Denmark, you might be able to tell me where to eat or which sightseeing tours not to miss, but that’s about all. Same goes for a book or a movie; you could tell me what you thought about it. Even then, it might say nothing about what I will think about it.

In many industries, especially technology, being first sometimes actually has a negative correlation with being the best. America had analog cell phones much earlier than many countries, including Turkey. But as a late-adopter Turkey was able to invest into the latest and greatest digital technology, which had been invented by the time cell phones made it to Turkey. Today, digital phones in America are much more expensive and not as reliable as their counterparts in Turkey.

Software programming is also similar. Someone who learned how to code many years ago might have been the greatest Fortran or Cobol programmer ever, but for these people making the leap to Object Oriented Programming has been much more difficult, causing them to lose their jobs to latecomers.

So being the first is not always the best and I really can’t see why it’s such a ‘hot’ trait. Why does it matter that she was the first to use the color orange? Why does it matter that he wore a turtleneck way before many others?

It all just seems so trivial to me.

But if you have any useful insight on this matter, I’d love it if you shared it.

Previously? Family Values.