Big Ideas that Matter in the World and in One's Life

Z&M--This is yet another article http://snipurl.com/2v0cv  that causes me to suggest that you read 'ip' regularly.

There are so many great and important ideas in the article, I hardly know where to start. So, if my experience tells me that's its a  few "big ideas" that matter more than most choices in life--you won't find me touting career paths in computer science, medicine, law, business, physics or math--you'll have to bear with me as I point to the ideas below and in posts yet to come, some others.

I've highlighted the relevant text but you should read the whole article yourself--even the longer paper referred to by it--rather than rely on my restatements here. Stephenson's ideas apply not just to government, but to every sphere of life, even to oneself.

"My argument is that government can transform itself both internally and externally, improving performance, lowering costs, and building public support and involvement, through a combination of:

* automated (preferably, real-time) data feeds, at first behind the firewall, and then externally as well, in a variety of formats such as RSS and KML

* easy access for both employees and (again, eventually) the public, to the growing number of easy-to-use Web 2.0 data visualization tools that allow taking data that may be hard to understand in tabular form and instead turn it into eye-catching and informative visualizations -- plus Web 2.0 tools such as tags, topic hubs, and threaded discussions that encourage sharing the data and insights -- and increase the chance of 'wisdom of crowds' knowledge emerging as a result!"

Get the data out there where you (and those few others with whom you work most closely) can see it by the cold light of day. It means you have to get out of your head and onto paper (I still think it’s better) or screen. First approximations or rough cuts are marvelously useful, perfection is not needed at the start—probably never. 

Announce yourself what the data shows—even when diametrically opposed to what you’ve been saying. Reinventing oneself is the key to survival, growth, opportunity and ultimately stability and contentment . . . one becomes content with the process of change, not the state one is presently in—as we know from physics it is easy to be fooled by a meta-stable state.

Communicate your data to all. Go public--it may not be the global community or even your neighborhood; perhaps just other groups at work. Do so in a way that people can grasp intuitively—or with minimal explanation. If the office assistant, janitor or supply room stocking clerk doesn’t understand it—it’s too dense; get away from the tables and move to simple graphs. Tufte shows the way with his simple design beauty.

I'm not so sure about the "wisdom of crowds", but a group convened for the purpose is surely smarter and more effective, when well led, than the genius working alone.