Wherever you are right now, you are somewhere within the context of a map. And whatever you are thinking right now, your thoughts are somewhere within the context of an explanation. When trying to find common ground between different opinions, it helps to have the maps of explanations, so we can say "you are here." One of the Explanation Age “maps” is called the “8 Degrees of Reason.” It allows us to see that we are both somewhere on the same map, but one of us may have an explanation from the seventh degree, with a reason of “because the evidence supports the hypothesis” – yet the other person is at the first degree, with a reason of “because I just don’t think so.” Another Explanation Age “map” is called the “Option Outline.” It allows us to see where we are within a thought process, the options which were considered, and how prior choices have dictated current options.

Instead of labeling someone, we can find out where we are on the same map, and how to start meeting in the middle. Finding out where someone is, in their thought process, might just turn up some "rusty gold."

Educational reform is not stalled due to a lack of technology or funding, but due to the misalignment between our Industrial-age models for how to learn, and the mind’s innate patterns for learning and explaining. When educational reform means sense-making reform, then we will know we are finally serious about moving past the Industrial Age, and into an age where “making students first” means that the learners are the primary stakeholder in the change project. Aligning the learner’s sense-making ability with the learning activities will require us to replace Bloom’s Taxonomy with a framework that is aligned with what the learners are trying to do, not what the teachers in 1956 were trying to do. To make this kind of change will take serious leadership and commitment, but the result will move the classroom out of the Industrial Age and into the Explanation Age.

Can you spot a "reactive" opinion and compare it to a "reflective" opinion? There ARE tools for describing "why" but they are mainly used by educational psychologists to help them capture the choices made by knowledge workers. Now, imagine if the role examined was not a specific knowledge worker but the human race. And imagine the visualization tools that help us answer "why" being available online.

We currently have visualization tools for data but not for explanations. Now neuroscience can provide a visualization of the brain, but we should not confuse a model of a brain with a model of an explanation, which will be used to explain whatever we find as we peer into a brain, or any other domain. Then something very interesting happens when we visualize the natural patterns of explanations - we compare them to the processes that drive the world's institutions for education, business innovation, and policy-making. As you might expect, they do not align. That's right. If the world does not make sense to you, it's not you, it's the world!

Compare the natural patterns of explanations with the process businesses try to use for innovation (Six Sigma) and you will see why America is falling behind in innovation. Compare the core reasons within our explanations with the teaching and testing method used by Education since 1956 (Bloom's Taxonomy) and you will see why America is falling behind in education. The fundamental models used by the world's institutions are misaligned with how the rational mind explains.

The single concept that would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit is that the visualization of explanations will change everything.

In recent times, we’ve moved from the Agricultural Age, to the Industrial Age, and now to the Information Age. But is the Information Age really an age that will get its own book 1,000 years from now, or is it just a transitional era – a period of time that will be the first chapter of the next age? The answer would be clearer if I could determine the name of the next age, so for over a decade I just called it the “X Age.” This is the next age that should be stable, so what exactly makes the current era transitional? Richard Wurman answered this question in 1989 with his book Information Anxiety when he defined the problem as the gap between “what we understand and what we think we should understand.” I would not call this the Information Age; it is the Information Anxiety Era. When this gap begins to close and this trend begins to reverse to approach equilibrium, then we will be in the “X Age,” or what at some point I realized was the “Explanation Age.”

In studying the fields of Process Engineering and Instructional Design, I realized that the frameworks we teach from and use today in business and education were invented in the Industrial Age, where efficiencies for factories and rapid training for World War II drove the requirements. There was a focus on "instructional" design rather than on "educational" design. Yet, the next age requires more understanding and innovation, even though we still operate from these frameworks from the last age. These frameworks, like Six Sigma DMAIC for process improvement, and Bloom’s Taxonomy for educational objectives, are still the underlying models in use today, even though they are out of touch with the current requirements.

The underlying frameworks from the last age were created by reviewing the "systems" in place. These were factories and classrooms seeking zero defects and maximum efficiency. The frameworks for the next age need to be created by reviewing another system: the system of explanations that humans use, which have a pattern and consistency that can be modeled and managed across organizations.

Now there is a new book on my bookshelf, just to the right of my set of books that represent the ages of civilization. That set of books has finally stopped staring at me, and has finally stopped asking questions of me. The new book on my bookshelf is my first book as an author, called The Explanation Age. When I recently placed it there, it hit me how profoundly I had been affected by the books next to it. Reading not only provides information, it produces questions and even actions, which eventually define who we are. After two decades of researching and writing, as I placed my book on my bookshelf I realized something I wish I had understood better years ago: you are what you read.