With all due respect to Messrs Harrell, de Lange, et al (truly), I can't
agree that an increasingly complex world justifies increasingly complex
writing about the world; it just makes things more challenging.
A few examples:
- All the folks I've known in the arts work very hard to get the fat out,
to make every word, note, or brush stroke necessary and meaningful.
Whether it's haiku or Henry James, Beethoven or Brecht, lean is beautiful.
- The fatter a user manual is, the less likely it is to answer the
important questions, because the less likely it is that the authors did
any real analysis of what the user needed.
- Years ago Robert Townsend (pres. of Avis) wrote that if it takes an
accountant and a computer to figure out whether you're making a profit,
find yourself another business.
- A major system development effort that cannot be understood by all in
terms of a fairly simple model is likely to be slow and buggy in
development and a bear in maintenance.
-The little I know about chaos theory suggests that complex and
unpredictable phenomena are "understood" in terms of fairly simple
repeating processes.
In short, complexity is no excuse.
Cheers
Bill Buxton
--"William Buxton" <wbuxton@hns.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>