Open Secrets
“Open Secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information” by Malcolm Gladwell in the January 8, 2007 New Yorker.
There are puzzles and there are mysteries. You solve puzzles by finding the missing information; with mysteries the problem is that you have too much information, and solving them requires analysis. In this article, Gladwell applies this paradigm from Gregory Treverton to Enron’s collapse (and also to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Watergate, Nazi propaganda in WWII, and cancer). He disputes the widely accepted premise that Enron withheld information on its dubious practices. In reality Enron disclosed nearly everything and analysts failed to understand the sea of data.
Today’s problems force us to re-examine the human element of information processing. Though the amount of information is paralyzing and noise is high, “the complex, uncertain issues that the modern world throws at us require the mystery paradigm.”
This article fits best with the 9/3 lecture on issues and contexts.