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J. C. Watts is the only black member of the Republican Party in leadership. He's going to resign from Congress. He's been there seven and a half years. He's had enough. Nobody can believe it. Nobody in Washington can believe it... In an interview two days ago, Watts said, Here's the problem with Washington: 'If you are explaining, you are losing.' If you are explaining, you're losing. It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem. Six years after this battle began, we're still explaining. We're still explaining and we are losing. They frame this as a massive battle to stop theft, to protect property... They extend copyrights perpetually. They don't get how that in itself is a form of theft. A theft of our common culture. We have failed in getting them to see what the issues here are and that's why we live in this place where a tradition speaks of freedom and their controls take it away.

Lawrence Lessig#28

PolicyPoliticsMediaCommunicationSimplification

About this quote

What does it mean?
Political communication has become superficial, favoring quick soundbites over complex explanations like copyright debates.
In plain terms
If you cannot explain an idea in three seconds, people lose interest.
What can you take from it?
Complex issues suffer in a culture that demands instant understanding.

Where it applies

  • political campaigns
  • media coverage
  • public policy debates

Putting it to work

  • simplify messages carefully
  • avoid oversimplification

Questions to consider

  • How do we explain hard issues quickly?
  • Is brevity always best?

Another view

Some complex ideas cannot be reduced to short phrases without losing meaning.

More from Lawrence Lessig

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  2. If you don't do something now, this freedom that you built, that you spend your life coding, this freedom will be taken away. Either by those who see you as a …

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  3. Here's a story: There was a documentary filmmaker who was making a documentary film about education in America. And he's shooting across this classroom with lo…

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