Today, in our remembrance of the life of Neil Armstrong, we acknowledge his personal accomplishment, and his symbolic role in history. I remember staying up late over 40 years ago to see his first step onto the moon’s surface from our black and white TV. And I remember the earlier speech by President John F. Kennedy that challenged a nation to dream bigger, not smaller. In remembering Neil Armstrong, we also remember a way of life, a feeling about life that inspired us to overcome challenges, and to “shoot for the moon.” We remember when inspirational leadership promised the moon, and when the world watched every flickering black and white minute of it.

Remembering is more than memorizing with flash cards. Remembering is more than a banner that says “We Will Never Forget” that is brought out for an annual event. Remembering is a deeply reflective activity. So how should we remember Neil Armstrong? The news channels, by their nature, focus on recent events, not reflective remembrance. So in their coverage of today’s memorial service and historic perspective, the website experience was a mixed bag. I visited ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC News, and USA Today.

Some covered the story on their front page, as a world event. Some listed a link under U.S. News. And others buried it even deeper under the topics of Science or Technology. This difference in categorization is a lesson in taxonomy. Was this just a technical topic? Does this story only have U.S. interest? Maybe our ability to remember is reflected in our ability to categorize, but also to advance. Forty years ago, I was not thinking about just the technology or being an American. So today, I remember Neil Armstrong, for his personal accomplishment and character, for his place in world history, and for all that he symbolized in a challenging and worthy organizational goal.

The problem with using this term “technology” is that we usually begin talking about technology for the sake of technology. It’s a big word, in that it needs to be broken down to be useful in a conversation. For example, it’s like asking if I like the “government.” Well, I don’t know if you’re talking about a war, my postman, taxes, NASA, or, well you get the idea. We tend to do this with our language. We clump subjects under one big term and throw it around to the point that we collectively lose track of “any” of the meanings. For example, we say “America” and I wonder if we are talking about a continent, a country, 50 states, 48 states, or an idea for protecting freedom. But the term “American Experiment” forces us to have a conversation about the “ideas” we live within, not just the dirt we live on. Similarly, “technology” is better described with the term “technological enabler,” which forces us to have a conversation about the “ideas” we are trying to enable.

I wonder how the early hunters were able to battle starvation without using the term “technology.” They were still able to sharpen and shape a rock, and fasten it to a stick to make a spear. They must have asked questions, at least in their minds, like “How can we take down the animal without getting hurt?”, “Don’t the long sticks keep them from hurting us?”, and “What if we put the sharp rock on the end of the stick?” The term “technological enabler” frees us from thinking that the solution must be complex, and forces us to have a conversation about the underlying questions.

To date, our technological enablers have been busy helping us answer questions related to “What?”, “When?”, “Where?”, and “How Many?” We expect to see online dictionaries, calendars, maps, and calculators. The Information Age was defined by the explosion in the amount of answers now available, but not by answering any new questions. The last decade has seen an explosion in “Social Media” as our technological enablers have begun to answer the many questions related to “Who?” And at some point, we will eventually turn our attention to the question of “Why?”

Today, thankfully, most of us are not focusing our everyday questions to battle starvation. In the knowledge economy we focus our questions instead on the reasons and rationale. Yet we have not yet adopted a user interface to the question of “Why?” Remember, dictionaries, calendars, maps, and calculators were already invented before the Information Age. The technologists just found new ways to present them and make them interactive. If we assume that humans always make the right decisions, or learn from them, agree on decisions, and keep track of those decisions, then the Information Age will work just fine to help us make informed decisions. But the major challenges we face today are due to “human decisions” and it is time for technological enablers to support our requirements of collaborative decision making, transparency, conflict resolution, and organizational learning. The Explanation Age is about the collection of terms and tools needed to allow us to say “You Are Here,” except not within a map for the question of “Where,” but within a thought process for the question of “Why.” Current decision making tools just focus on the question of “Which” as they support many variables into a single decision. But we need the user interface to mimic the thought process which ties our individual decisions into explanations. We need The Explanation Age.