Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 16:46:19 -0400
From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net>
Subject: Re: Scientists break speed of light


JF Koh wrote:
> 
> Greetings list,
> 
> I'm sure some of you would have come across this by now.  Just thought it
> might be of interest.  Faster computers here we come!
> 
[snip]

The great contemporary Jesuit scholar and student of human
communication, Walter Ong, once asked the following question:

    What is the point of a person acquiring perfect French pronunciation,
    if they have nothing of value to say in any language?

Two metaphors, one hopeful and the other less so, come
to my mind vis-a-vis today's pervasive "speed up" frenzy:

(1) Ths less hopeful metaphor is the way "black holes"
apparently develop in cosmological space: faster and faster
until nothing escapes except some synchrotron radiation....

(2) The more hopeful metaphor (which I think is less likely
to be applicable!) is how in the nursery rhyme Little Black Sambo
got the tigers who were chasing him to chase each other and
all turn into butter.

Who will be the first economist or cosmologist to
prove that haste does not make waste?

To quote someone else's email sig file:  "Data is not
information.  Information is not knowledge.  Knowledge
is not wisdom."

+\brad mccormick

-- 
   Let your light so shine before men, 
               that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)

   Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)

Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
<![%THINK;[XML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/


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