This is part 2 of a larger blog post, you can read the introduction here.
A familiar phrase from my close family members (siblings) is to prefix my name with the words “Easy life”. Rather than reject it I have taken it as my mantra in some respects, although I like to call it the “path of least resistance“! What it really means is that I don’t always have to take the time to know in detail something, I’m also quite comfortable not reinventing the wheel (example smustard.com for SketchUp Ruby scripts I don’t program in Ruby, but other people do). You have to be careful of course otherwise you may get too reliant on other people and end up knowing nothing.
Bran Ferran talked about it in relation to the military and assessing who made good commanders (see this article at GoGeomatics Canada, for his neat diagram, where are you I wonder?). His main point was that smart lazy people create self correcting systems (so they don’t have to be there all the time), it make sense when you think about it.
I think there is some mileage in this idea to, but you can’t be too lazy or nothing gets done (including this blog post). I’m a great believer in being comfortable with not knowing everything, just tell me the basics and what the application is of that knowledge and I am more than happy not to understand the deeper science behind something.
In a sense if there is a to be a profession of pure Geodesigners we will have to find the smart lazy people who can manage all this data properly. They cannot get bogged down in the individual detail of a discipline. The essence of geodesign is to take into account all factors relating to a particular design and manage the competition between those factors (whatever that is).