Technical Fluency Stifled for Decades

For 35 years, prestigious organizations have collectively obstructed progress in technology for simplifying the expression of software and other technical knowledge. They have avoided noticing: ! their estrangement from traditional engineering values such as identifying and advancing the leading edges of simplification. ! a poverty of available expertise and literature on simplification. ! their collective silence on some central issues of information technology. ! that pieces of information can be designed so they can be easily arranged. ! that students are massively taught how to arrange pieces of information by teachers who have little idea what is a reasonable design for pieces of information. ! large opportunities to simplify technical information. ! that they have been profitably forcing millions of software developers to generate complexity that broadly undermines software quality. ! that eliminating harmful complexity from computer software is largely the same problem as its elimination from other technical knowledge. ! the potential for unification of semantics for precise language. Knowledge of simplification can show providers of technical information how to be more helpful and less controlling toward others. First steps in resuming progress could focus on the candor of those who participate in the management of safety-sensitive complex systems.