in DC and pondering the HOW and the WHY
So I was having this conversation last night with Alan Rosenblatt…
I was trying to figure out why I was so impatient with many people’s language in DC.
And I realized what it is… You see a major failing of mine is what I call the “WHY.” I often automatically see so many “WHY”s that are so interconnected and complex. I have a hard time describing them all to people and so I can’t even think about writing about them. I can only hope to create diagrams that show flow and interoperability. So instead I focus on the “HOW” and look at “HOW”s that could support many many “WHY”s
But the “WHY”s are crucial to getting people to do things… in DC that is all anyone says. The funny thing about it, is they like to argue about “WHY”s it is very difficult to change someone’s perspective. So I don’t understand why it is always so crucial to them to change my “WHY”?
I prefer people that focus on changing and discussing “HOW”s… the funny thing about “HOW”‘s is sometimes that can help multiple “WHY” if done correctly. The difficult thing is “HOW”s are concrete and people like to grade or dismiss “HOW” So I suppose it is not politic for that reason – the concrete dissent… Of course as a scientist, I simply think “Hm ok didn’t see that, I’ll change it.” Or I think “That makes my model too complex you can do it to solve your own “WHY”" If I discount it completely I tell them why it doesn’t work for my model. Soooo many times is ends up being not that anyone is wrong on the HOW but typically that some miscommunication occurred.
So my newest project – Citability.org is really about solving many WHYs In fact I know without a doubt it will solve WHYs I haven’t even thought of yet. The main WHYs I am stating are
1) Putting things on the web it makes it more accessible to normal people.
2) On a paragraph level is becomes issue based and more usable by normal people.
3) If you make it a humanreadable URL is easy to copy and paste for normal people and can be googled and aggregated
There are so many other advanced reasons such as creating the semantic web. All the ways Transparent Federal Budget could use it in documenting topics. How it would help all the documentation tools out there like wikipedia, reframeit, apture etc etc
But really… it is the simplicity of it that to me makes it beautiful
http://house.gov/BILL/datetimestamp/title/section/chapter/paragraph/clause
or
for websites themselves…
http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/datetimestamp/header/paragraph
So simple to cut and paste and post and search… several WHYs taken care of by a simple HOW
with me I so prefer the discussion of HOW…
