The Momentum of an Idea
Ian writes (concerned that management intend to replace face to face lecturing with video-conferencing)
A straw in the wind was a recent note to some of us about course codes ......
I can feel it in the wind and it's upside down
I can feel it in the dust as I get off the bus
on the outskirts of town
B.D.
Ian asks
Is the aim to increase local course availability, reduce local loads or reduce local staff?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Ib.
There is an effect, which should not be overlooked, that may be having some influence in the apparently irresistible promotion of
video-conferencing. An idea acquires a momentum of its own and will proceed regardless of the logic, or lack of logic, in the justification
for its existence. This may be a good thing or a bad thing. A tragic example of this effect is the Manhattan project: an idea that proceeded,
with no justifiable purpose, onwards to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Tolstoy investigates this effect in the closing chapters of War and Peace. He seems to have written the vast earlier parts of the novel to
set the stage for his theories on force and power. Hollywood with the film Camelot (Warner J L 1967) stumbles (badly!) across the tragedy of
an idea with momentum.
How does an idea like video-conferencing obtain momentum? In a number of ways: a thought becomes a line of print in promotional material, a
line of print becomes a commitment. Committees are formed, they meet, they investigate, they pass resolutions, they forward reports and
instructions to other committees, they receive reports and instructions from other committees, the members of the committees become
recognized as members of the committee, they become convinced of their own importance, they write their positions into their promotion
applications, people take arbitrary stands, entrench themselves and defend their reputation, chairs of committees have status and access,
they obtain funds, they run workshops, send out emails, design people plan and produce specifications, hardware people obtain quotations,
miscellaneous nondescript people can find a justification for being, people without ideas of their own step on board and add further mass
to the idea now moving with ponderous, but definite, velocity.
Mass times velocity equals momentum.
Heresy Index
November 19, 2004