tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post2110578192681170959..comments2024-03-21T03:55:51.565-07:00Comments on Omniorthogonal: The Great Man Theorymtravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-51352691299396021892011-10-07T09:00:31.967-07:002011-10-07T09:00:31.967-07:00The distinction between an agent-based view of the...The distinction between an agent-based view of the world and a more dynamical-system-based view was a big chunk of my dissertation work, where I was trying to apply it to the design of programming languages and environments.<br /><br />But I didn't realize until yesterday that the same dichotomy appears in Carlyle and Tolstoy. Just shows that 15 years later I'm still not finished with it.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-88245075657152742372011-10-07T05:16:33.804-07:002011-10-07T05:16:33.804-07:00I too have been thinking about this. It would ap...I too have been thinking about this. It would appear that we have a deep seated preference for condensing the story, the model, down to something concrete and identifiable; and in many many cases that becomes an individual. Sort of the way that the whole debacle that was the Depression and then the World War Two becomes Hitler.<br /><br />Of course a business strives to take ownership of a large swath of this or that transformative/displacing transition. Moore's law and his friends have been boiling frogs in quickly and in quantity; and different firms have taken ownership over different chunks of that. The post war shift into suburbia would be another example.<br /><br />There is something here too about how our story templates require a hero and something about the Gods; and we do get confused. And we do love a bit of entertainment violence in the character's persona.exuberancehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02180872922559635562noreply@blogger.com