Arianna Huffington's Notes From TED: Can Simplicity and Innovation Overcome Complexity and Cynicism?
February 11, 2010
In her notes on the 2010 TED series, Arianna Huffington gives a rundown of TED curator Chris Anderson’s opening remarks. Huffington states that Anderson “met the zeitgeist head on, talking about his rage at the fact that every idea about how to deal with our big problems is crushed on a wall of cynicism and complexity.” She goes on to quote Anderson’s remarks on Session 11, titled “Simplicity,” for which Philip K. Howard will one of the speakers, this Saturday, February 13. “We are choking ourselves in a web of complexity,” States Anderson in the quote. “Our financial system is so complex it can’t be regulated. The health care plan is so complex no one understands it. Our politics is so complex it’s become a complete mess.” Anderson then gave brief statements about the presenters, including the following about Howard: “‘Philip Howard,’ he said. ‘His talk is an important call to rethink the role of law. The application of our laws has become so perverse, it chokes off innovation.’”
[Huffington Post]
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Comments ( 1 )
uday.pasricha said:
on February 11, 2010 - 9:59 pm
Complexity and cynicism is a potential symptom of “excessive data that as emerged as our zealousness to have and create excessive choice”. A surfeit of opinion alone causes complexity because human ego creates conflict. Life without lawyers is difficult for America whose GDP would be further eroded if that were to happen but developing democracies need to learn from the linear failure of “excessive choice” which has come to be seen as successful expression of democracy.
With democracy as the aspiration for all mankind, surely Philip must agree that the human rights charter was not intended for 6 billion to have individual rights and thus a few trillion opinions to be taken into cognizance everytime we need execution. Every human cannot become participant when a plan or policy has to be implemented. All successful implementation (even within corporates) has almost always been based on totalitarian authority. Democracy currently suffers from “poor execution” created by complexity and cynicism which in turn is the result of “excessive opinion and choices”. Democracy must shift its focus to society and its benefit. The individual is just a component that makes society.