a more beautiful question - warren berger

[...]... people who actually think for themselves?” What is a flame?29 It seems such a simple question, but do you know the answer? Actor Alan Alda had been fascinated with that question as a child Nearly seventy years later, Alda started the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York and he started off by organizing a contest to see who could best explain What is a flame? The... seeking more information and clarification by way of questioning Not that it’s easy for a child to ask a question Harris has described it as a series of complex mental maneuvers.” It starts with knowing that you don’t know The asking of a question also indicates that the child understands there are various possible answers: “When they ask what’s for dinner, they can imagine that it might be soup or pasta,”... able to query a search engine or a database; immense resources and capabilities are available today to those who are able to access and traverse the network that now exists online By tapping into social networks, online sources of information, and digital communities, it is increasingly feasible, MIT’s Ito points out, for an individual to tackle a large challenge or question, or to launch an initiative... Broadway shows command premium prices, while movie theaters charge the same price no matter how hot the show is? Hlawitschka’sexplanation, as shared by Frank in a New York Times article, is that unlike on Broadway, additional copies of a popular movie can be inexpensively made and shown many times a day on multiple screens With low prices, movie theater owners can fill many more seats and generate far... Why is my father-inlaw so difficult to get along with? Why aren’t the players urinating more? 39 Many companies and even entire industries can be traced back to a question but they’re usually not as odd as this one In 1965, Dwayne Douglas, a football coach at the University of Florida, wondered, Why aren’t the players urinating more after the games? The coach was baffled because he knew his players were... questions But eventually, all doctors—and all the rest of us, as well—will have access to some form of cloud-based super-search-engine that can quickly answer almost any factual question with a level of precision and expertise that’s way beyond what we have now Which reinforces that the value of questions is going to keep rising as that of answers keeps falling Clearly, technology will have the answers covered—so... observe the questioning dynamic “I was in a seventh-grade science class and this kid started asking all kinds of questions about the universe and stars—and the teacher was just trying to say, ‘Look, here are the planets, now memorize this.’ And this was powerful to me The message was that in this class ‘we don’t have time for questions— because that will take time away from the number of answers I have to... Peavey, a quirky, 7 colorful social activist whose work revolved around what she called “strategic questioning” aimed at bridging cultural differences between people, once observed that a good question is like a lever used to pry open the stuck lid on a paint can.” Maybe we talk about what a question is like because it’s hard to wrap our minds around what it actually is Many tend to think of it as a. .. actually do anything about a problem yourself, then you’re not really questioning—you’re complaining And that situation you’re complaining about may never change because, as Regina Dugan, a former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) director, has observed about problems in general, “We think someone else—someone smarter4 than us, someone more capable, with more resources—will solve that problem... Why/What If/How progression offers a simplified way to approach questioning; it’s an attempt to bring at least some semblance of order to a questioning process that is, by its nature, chaotic and unpredictable A journey of inquiry is bound to lead you into the unknown (as it should), but if you have a sense of the kinds of questions to ask at various stages along the way, you’ve at least got some road markers . of war have brought forth many a beautiful question. In 1859, a young Swiss Calvinist named Henry Dunant traveling in Italy came upon the aftermath of a bloody battle between the Austrian and. never actually do anything about a problem yourself, then you’re not really questioning—you’re complaining. And that situation you’re complaining about may never change because, as Regina Dugan, a. life, and something that anyone, even a child, can do. Yet chances are, for the rest of her life, that four-year-old girl will never again ask questions as instinctively, as imaginatively, or as