AM deLange's analaysis of "time dissonance" by evoking entropy is
intriguing and I need to think about it more carefully. BUT he did,
indirectly raise an issue which I would like further help in puzzling
through
Think about a report which is due which must show some increase in sales,
profits, etc. Accountants have been known to take "one time" entries
which allow for a sale to be back dated or use some other proceedure which
moves data from one side of a time line to the other. Loss Carry Forwards
are a nice term and an example. They are legal fictions which allow
adjustments to be made to reconcile a past or a future with some desired
end result- The same thing is done when project goals don't meet at the
appointed point in time. some may be ahead and others behind schedule.
Pretty soon, the only thing that is on time is the clock itself, ticking
away in linear time.
Nature doesn't seem to have the kind of precision that we try to maintain
with our chronometers. babies arrive approximately 9 month from
conception, the spring weather arrives somewhere around a date certain and
180 day corn doesn't pop up mature at the end of 180 days. But airline
departures and arrivals are clocked to the minute as are the trains in
Japan and Europe (not the US...grin...).
Nature seems to operate with a larger bandwidth than we have created for
ourselves. And that is what happens in business. Wall Street wants to see
10K's and 10Q's, stocks are bought and sold based on an index which is
reported on certain day, or earnings which are reported on a defined
interval.
When Henry Ford built his first cars and you blew the piston, you went to
the local junk yard, found a piston, threw it in and the engine ran.
Today, engines are so finely machined that bearings for some transmissions
come in five different tolerances in the 5th decimal place
Do the issues run much deeper and are we treating symptoms and not
fundamental problems? Do we have to dig further down, and is that why we
have the "management theory of the month" like the latest in teenage zit
cures? Dopes time dissonance point to more fundamental issues and are we
setting up constraints and boundaries because that is all that our limited
understanding can either comprehend or work with? Are our measures
constrained beca;use, as AM Lange suggests, we only have one "ruler". As
Tolkien says,
...One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...
thoughts?
tom abeles
--tom abeles <tabeles@tmn.com>
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