> David, I was intrigued by your description of the orthogonal time lines.
> This has been a central concern of mine in trying to model how
> organizations, individual biographies, and scientific problems (or
> medical/clinical problems) interact. Discrete/continuous is an important
> distinction. The discreteness may also be textured in various ways, or
> have its own ryhthm (or not). From the point of view of the individual,
> the horizon of expectation (Ricoeur) or trajectory projection (Strauss)
> also matters a great deal. Is the particular timeline unfolding as
> expected, and if not, what can be done to reshape it, if anything?
>
> Boy, I resonated with your description (and I think the thick complexity of
> the texts from Jay and others in talking about this recently reflects this)
> about the difficulty in conceptualizing or envisioning these timelines and
> their differences. We really need 4-D visualization tools to even start.
> If you look at the article, "Of Lungs and Lungers" that Geof Bowker and I
> did last year in MCA, there's a (realy funky) attempt to draw how the
> different trajectories fracture, collide, pull each other along.
>
What a beautiful connection, Susan, and a beautiful article. I
will read it again with this new perspective.
One new idea that seemed to leap off your comments is that we may
be stuck with multiple 3-D visualizations, but we don't have to be stuck
with a single carpet. If you look at my Figure 3c in the same issue as
your article and imagine each line as a cut-away view of a blanket, you
can see my drift.
David