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Re: [dist-obj] B-A-I-T :) (was: Re[2]: [dist-obj] [Longish] ... )

Unguent CorporationDavid McCusker said:

>About twenty years ago when I was just out of high school, I had a big
>panic attack when I figured this out.  Life is like riding shotgun in a
>car with a really bad driver at the wheel; all you can do is relax and
>hope you make it where you are going.  (Or you can go all type A and
>get ulcers, or make a more common choice of believing nice lies.)

and

>The original one I had in mind years ago was a view
>of a large and complex city as an organism, which has interdependent
>systems no one understands.  This would be very like the interlocking
>between business, technology, capitalization, and financial stories.

I'm enjoying this discussion enormously, perhaps because some of the stories
resonate strongly with my experiences. I recall a moment of epiphany about
35 years ago when I was working for a Canadian consulting firm that
specialized in designing road and freeway networks for large cities. We
would collect traffic data by laying pneumatic tubes across roads and
counting axles (punched onto paper tape, would you believe). These data were
then subjected to analysis and an algorithm (named after Moore) was used to
determine optimal traffic flows for the city. On a certain corner, on a
particular weekday, at a specific time of day, one could predict with
uncanny accuracy how many vehicles would pass that point in a 5-minute
interval (for example, 35 vehicles). As usual, not thinking deeply enough, I
didn't find that too surprising. Until a co-worker pointed out that it was
NEVER THE SAME 35 vehicles. City as organism (and internet traffic as
organism) finally took root in my brain.

On another subject, how many here have toyed with e-prime and the problem of
hidden metaphors in communication or story-telling?



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