Widgets

Today I was in an all-day meeting at work. And it got a little ugly.

I work for a global company. That is, a company which has plants and facilities in many countries across the world. In order to be more efficient and avoid duplication, my company wants departments who do the same thing, but in different countries, to use the same software. Makes sense, right? If I'm building widgets in the USA, and someone else in my company is building widgets in Japan, why not use the same widget-building software?

Well, this is easier said than done. Though we are both building widgets, my buddy in Japan has a slightly different process for building his widgets, so he claims his software needs are slightly different from mine. The challenge is, can the software be made to accommodate the slight differences in the widget-building process, or must we design and build two sets of widget-building software? My job is to help find ways to allow the use of one software tool which accommodates the needs of "widget-builders" in all countries.

So anyhow, in today's meeting, things got a bit heated when one group of widget-builders became convinced that their method of widget-building was fundamentally different from another group's, and thus required different software. They were convinced that the other country's widget-building process was crazy, and the folks from that country didn't understand why on earth we would use such a crazy method for building widgets here in the US of A.

So where am I going with all this?

It occurred to me that this gulf of understanding I witnessed today, regarding "widget-building", was very much like the talk-radio arguments you hear between liberals and conservatives. Both groups are convinced they are morally "in the right", and are doing the best thing for our country. Neither group of well-intentioned individuals can understand AT ALL how on earth the other side can possibly hold the positions they do.

I believe these positional differences (on abortion, the war in Iraq, taxes, etc) come from a fundamental difference in worldview. Wikipedia has a good definition of worldview: it is the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it. In order to have a rational discussion of issues, it is necessary to first understand everyone's basic assumptions (worldview), and to work from there.

One of my goals as I blog is to lay out for you my worldview, and how I came to have it. Then, I can hopefully show that my opinions/thoughts/positions are internally consistent with my worldview. All this will hopefully lead to meaningful dialog with folks who may not share my opinions. You may not agree with my worldview, but hopefully you will be able to see how someone with my worldview would think, feel, and act the way I do...

Anyhoo, gotta get to bed, more widget arguments tomorrow!