Theft at the Public Till
demonstration in front of city hall as they attempt to make a claim on the human-services budget.*** The failings of the symbolic system are legion. Typical are quotes such as these taken from the New York Times. “I’m sick of the whole system,” said Mr. Oliver Dinsmore, whose job involves dismantling machines in a shut- tered General Motors plant in Framingham, Massachusetts. In the view of many voters the problems of governance seem to have become rooted in our institutions of governing - from politicians whose convictions shift with the latest polls, to lobbyists, whose contributions are the lifeblood of campaigns and to the news media, which thrive on conflict. “I feel like my opinion doesn’t count,” said Bob Carrie, a machine shop supervisor in Franklin Park, Illinois, “The common person just doesn’t have a voice.” Television news is the average person’s main source of information and analysis about politics and public policy. The professional crowd increas- ingly is made up of policy specialists who develop expert information and policy analysis and of sophisticated users of their products. Much like televi- sion, data and statistics are now so commonplace that little thought is given to how the plethora of information is developed and analyzed or how it is verified for accuracy or for soundness of interpretation. And that is a crucial problem. The information explosion has outrun the nation’s competence to make sense of the deluge of data in forms ranging from the offerings of the mass media to the esoteric products of universities and think tanks. On one hand, problems, opportunities, and the environments in which they appear are becoming more complex. On the other hand, to survive this explosion of complexity, people cultivate specialties. They want to be experts at something. Organizations increasingly hire and train experts to deal with the daily plethora of problems and opportunities. In society, ac- ademia, the sciences, and business, the age of complexity confronts the era of specialization. But specialists too often miss the forest for the trees. Our problems tend to be global or individual and not within the purview of one specialist alone. The new reality is that it will take the collaborative efforts of people with different skills to create innovative solutions and innovative products. Complex situations put a real premium on group processes, a
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