{"id":1775,"date":"2010-04-23T07:43:06","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T11:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/?p=1775"},"modified":"2010-04-20T18:34:32","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T22:34:32","slug":"the-simplest-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/04\/the-simplest-thing.html","title":{"rendered":"The Simplest Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much ado is being made over the Supreme Court’s recent toe-dip into technology<\/a>.\u00a0 The case actually involved privacy rights, but they were over whether or not an employer had the right to monitor or view an employee’s text messages on a company phone.\u00a0 The chuckling included moments when Justices Roberts and Scalia seemed to get wrapped around the axle trying to understand that messages passed through a service provider network rather than being delivered directly device to device.\u00a0 And there were repeated attempts by the lawyers and the Justices to equate texting to letter writing.\u00a0 Most of the confusion was over issues that would have been easily answered by any teenager.\u00a0 The horror.<\/p>\n

Actually, I’m having trouble getting too worked up about it.\u00a0 The court is largely made up of septuagenarians, and totally composed of lawyers.\u00a0 Neither group is known for being particularly tech savvy.\u00a0 Further, I’d be surprised if you polled politicians in general if you’d find a majority were technically literate.\u00a0 The horror.<\/p>\n

And I’m still having trouble getting worked up about that.\u00a0 It did get me thinking though, how should issues requiring specific domain knowledge be handled?\u00a0 The world in general is a pretty complicated place.\u00a0 It’s not just about technology, but global economics and banking is frightfully complicated.\u00a0 Military strategies in the age of wars without fronts and attacks ranging from the technological to the biological to the nuclear are extremely complex.\u00a0 It is completely unreasonable to expect politicians and judges to be up to speed on these and other areas such that they can make good decisions.<\/p>\n

Historically, when dealing with a highly technical topic, experts would be consulted.\u00a0 What was required by politicians was the ability to assess the credibility of the expert and the implications of the proposed plan.\u00a0 Experts are still called on today.\u00a0 The difference is that in our current 24×7 news cycle, the experts are vetted by the court of public opinion rather than the politicians.\u00a0 All too often, it isn’t about which plan is best for the nation, it’s about which plan can be digested down to a sound bite and accepted by Joe Six-pack.<\/p>\n

Participatory government is a good thing.\u00a0 However, having everyone involved in the minutiae of every plan and policy is not a good thing at all.\u00a0 The Founding Fathers created a representative government for a reason.\u00a0 It wasn’t just the impracticality of holding a national referendum on every detail in the 18th century.\u00a0 Rather, it was that having that many cooks inevitably spoiled the broth.\u00a0 Not that government should operate in secret, but recognizing that you elect a President, a Senator, and a Representative to do what they think is best.\u00a0 Based on their results, you decide whether or not to send them back for another term.\u00a0 It doesn’t work that way anymore.\u00a0 The campaign never ends.\u00a0 The news polls are incessant.\u00a0 The result is that our politicians have become puppets with many people pulling the strings all at once.<\/p>\n

An open statement to anyone I’ve ever elected to office:\u00a0 if you need advice on computer networks, communications infrastructure, or similar topics, call me.\u00a0 Maybe I can help.\u00a0 If you need advice on military strategies, medical policy, transportation planning, economic development, or damn near anything else, I’ve probably got an opinion for you.\u00a0 But if you pay it any mind, you’re an idiot.<\/p>\n

Einstein famously said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”\u00a0 As a society we’ve begun to habitually ignore the second part of that quote.\u00a0 We just want it simple.\u00a0 But the world isn’t so simple.\u00a0 And we, and more importantly our leaders, keep treating it that way at our own peril.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much ado is being made over the Supreme Court’s recent toe-dip into technology.\u00a0 The case actually involved privacy rights, but<\/p>\n

Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1777,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions\/1777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}