Monday, June 09, 2014
Decoupling
Continuing the theme of Soft motors and decoupling as an alternative to the permanently destroyed feedback mechanisms of culture and government.
Earlier I wrote that decoupling is unfamiliar. It was more familiar to car drivers and radio listeners and machine operators in earlier times. A printing press or loom would be run via pulleys from a central shaft, and you'd start, stop and adjust your machine by tightening or loosening the leather pulley. A Model T driver learned how to apply the low and high bands to shift gears.
On an early crystal radio, adjusting the coupling between antenna and detector was an integral part of tuning.
Polistra shows off her Signal Corps SCR-54 of 1916 vintage.
Artistic note: I had an animation of decoupling here, but after looking at it I decided it was both technically wrong and visually useless. Even though I knew what I was trying to express, I couldn't derive any meaning from the animation! So I took it down. But I had fun building it, which is the only thing that matters.
The notion of slipping the pulley probably offers a better analogy for thinking about cultural and political decoupling. I'll return to this theme after clarifying my own thoughts.
Later: I returned to the slipping-pulleys theme here.
¶ 10:19 AM 
Artistic note: I had an animation of decoupling here, but after looking at it I decided it was both technically wrong and visually useless. Even though I knew what I was trying to express, I couldn't derive any meaning from the animation! So I took it down. But I had fun building it, which is the only thing that matters.
The notion of slipping the pulley probably offers a better analogy for thinking about cultural and political decoupling. I'll return to this theme after clarifying my own thoughts.
Later: I returned to the slipping-pulleys theme here.
¶ 10:19 AM
