What is the molar mass of LinkedIn?

All things are made up of atoms. So, what is the molar mass (g/mol) of LinkedIn?

And, why don’t we have a Nobel Prize in Marketing?

With the progress and achievement we have made in education as a whole, it is safe to assume that even the dropouts of a science class know the concept of atoms, a concept that is mentioned in Chapter 1 of over 90% of high school science textbooks. But then, what about LinkedIn? Is LinkedIn made of atoms? Of course not. Okay then, when we say, “I just posted on LinkedIn,” what do we exactly mean?

Language is fun (or at least English), as it does not have a specific rule to distinguish virtual and physical objects. Otherwise, it would be more annoying than the fact that in certain languages, objects have genders (like German). Language not only allows us to communicate, but it actually lets us blur the line between the physical world and the abstract world. We say we watch a good show on Apple TV, but in fact, we are just staring at an illuminated physical screen with electric current and diodes that shine precisely down to the nanosecond. Even LinkedIn is a platform; you cannot lie on it, just like on your bed. So yes, I refute my first sentence - indeed, only physical matters are made of atoms and obey physical laws. And, of course, not all matters are physical matters. Psychological matters or LinkedIn matters are not made of atoms.

This is the gap that most scientists cannot leap over, as they are so consumed by what they say in the lab every day that they forget the physical world is not all. This is also why science or technology people commonly undervalue marketing and the significance of finding the correct blue color for your logo.

As a scientist by training and an entrepreneur by practice, I used to argue with my marketing team days and nights about their work by challenging them with my scientific framework. Having written a handful of unpublished arguments on whether marketing is science, I no longer find this argument intellectually interesting, right after I found out that I mistakenly embraced reductionism a bit too much and overlooked that the world is not just the physical world. Clearly, yearning for a Nobel Prize in Medicine is no less shallow than a marketing guru saying building a huge marketing funnel is everything.

To my audience here, if you have read my writings, watched my videos, listened to my podcasts, and you say you like me, it is totally logical. However, it is impossible for you to get tripped over by me on the street unless we are at the same place physically because the “me” here is an abstraction, as virtual as anything that stays in your mind.

Back to brand and marketing, most people don’t buy a Lamborghini for its Newtonian force to escape the curvature of time and space or a Louis-Vuitton bag for its particular arrangement of atoms and molecules. It’s all about abstractions, as much as science is about good explanations (by good explanations, I meant the same way as David Deutsche does in his book, The Beginning of Infinity).

Thanks for reading,

Anthony