The Lab

Have you been living in a cave?

I wouldn’t recommend asking this question of anyone other than myself. It assumes a depth of knowledge about a particular subject that is expected to be of common knowledge.

And I wonder if people these days would be less prone to ask such a question, since the choices for entertainments and media consumption are so vast that we can longer assume shared experiences as we may have in the age of mass media. We are moving well beyond the borders of the age of mass media, where the power of the media came from its ability to direct the flow of public discourse to some degree by the choices made in the editing process. When newspapers were a dominant form of mass communication, the daily question was about what should occupy the coveted position on the front page of the paper?

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The Best Laid Plans

Ideas are not innovative unless they are realized (Johansson, The Medici Effect).

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

“To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785, a poem by Robert Burns.

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