Random Musings:

Don't Miss: The Story Of Stuff

Story of Stuff is a 20 minute video with Annie Leonard that was sponsored by the Tides Foundation and the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption. (Thanks to KH for pointing me to it.)

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Among other things, the video shows how the supply chain from natural resource extraction to production, distribution, consumption and then to disposal constitutes a nasty Wicked Problem. This is one of the few videos I've seen recently that doesn't talk down to the viewer. Instead, the Story of Stuff is highly informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

Wicked Problem Quotes

My Google Alerts occasionally provide interesting and sometimes useful information regarding what others are thinking regarding Wicked Problems and other selected topics. Wicked Problems as involving enigmas seems to be in the collective consciousness these days.

In a blog posting on invasive species, Ioannis Petrus writes:

We push and pull at solutions and argue over definitions because invasive species are a type of wicked problem. When we try to solve the problem we find ourselves facing what should have been suspect unintended unforeseen consequences. Wicked problems have numerous intervention points, have consequences difficult to envision, and are surrounded by a dynamic uncertainty wrapped in a moving frontier of knowledge.

Perhaps this sentence echo's Winston Churchill's famous (in some quarters) quote about the Soviet Union:

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Regardless,  I couldn't agree more with Petrus'  characterization of  Wicked Problems.