You make a good point on communication and the use of vocabulary styles. It is my experience that even peers in different industry sectors fail to understand each other at times. It is very important that a common ground be established in the first instance. This becomes doubly important when addressing a general audience. Technology practitioners can do well to 'walk in the other persons shoes' from time to time. It is also important to recognise job profiling. I think about my own CV and how it is presented. Does it make sense to a non-technical person? Can a recruitment consultant understand it? How about the HR manager? Once the audience understands the general context then the art of translating begins. It is a skill that quite a number of us in the technology world can do well to develop.

One obstacle to clear communication is cultural, where nuance is difficult to avoid. This can arise whether a subject is being addressed in simple or in complex terms. Most of the projects I have managed have used English as their working language. Nonetheless communication was often tricky, due to the cultural roots of the individuals. So for example, two Belgians speaking good grammatical English might understand one another well, but fail to convey clear meaning to me, a native speaker of English. Why? Because they had learnt their English in a different context, and with different underlying assumptions. A demonstration of this is the misunderstandings that often do arise when speaking with North Americans. This suggests to me that even when the real objective is to explain something that is inherently complicated, it pays to start simply. Unfortunately our society seems determined to make communication between cultures more, rather than less fraught. We place low value on education for "its own sake". For example, the perception of study at university as only a root to qualifying for a job, the decline of language teaching in schools, and the lack of popular interest in rigorous science, must surely make more difficult the development of any real ability to understand other cultures. I am not a religious person. However a lack of cultural understanding and empathy is dangerous, when we are faced with any kind of terrorism, and it seems ingratitude of the worst kind to ignore the debt that western society owes to Islamic culture in making accessible the knowledge and ideas of ancient Greek, Arab and Indian thinkers.

Hence the challenge or one might say opportunity for IT Professionals to shine and distinguish themselves... Engineers to. Its as form of (career) evolution I would think. I have met numerous engineers that are more non-technical than one might think as well as more business people that are too technical for their own good. The problem has always been language. If you are too embedded into your (business) culture or subject matter per-se you will fail to communicate effectively. Similar to different nations with different language and different culture. Even if the language is (commonly) plain english still the same terms means different things to different culture. Coming to "complex" nature. I learned early on to "translate" complex subject matter in simple terms or analogies; mostly driven by the need to understand for myself. Often as well it turns out that complex subject is only complex for the sake of complexity ("how to get what you want by saying what you want complicated so that no-one except yourself understands, hence making you the expert" = aka job security aka corporate politics). I have even observed such being the case purely being based on lack of education (I believe this being attributed primarily to Senior and Executive Management). Remembering my engineering training, the first thing that we were educated on is the fact that we are not educated to be "techies" in the wider sense but Leaders in the common sense. As such one was expected to maintain a certain distance from the subject matter. Going back to the point of the blog and the specific examples; simplicity is subject to what the subject is and ultimately the subjects level of complexity. Hence a good example of making things more complicated than they are. I would not normally attempt to explain Einsteins specific Relativity theory as it was (in school) "just a bunch of complicated equations", which however proved to be important for Material Sciences particular Solid State physics, which is the foundation of the Blue Chip industry. Making this a simple explanation that even makes sense and is relevant. As to the General Relativity Theory, this is already simplified in itself but I surely can explain it in more simple terms. Lets remember the Einstein found his limits when it came to statistics and uncertainty demonstrating the colliding realms of Science and Religion (these days it would be more between Politics and "Religion"...Would it now ?!) My recommendation is to not force the issue of complexity vs simplicity - in simple terms: Don't try too hard. Resistance is Futile. More think about what are the main aspects of the subject matter, issue, solution, strategy you are trying to relay and sum it up - which makes it a summary of course. It normally starts with "In a nutshell...". Bringing forward the results or consequences is the best step in thinking and going about "Simplicity".