{"id":531,"date":"2004-01-09T18:21:13","date_gmt":"2004-01-09T22:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2004\/01\/09\/orders-of-magnitude-revisited\/"},"modified":"2004-01-09T18:21:13","modified_gmt":"2004-01-09T22:21:13","slug":"orders-of-magnitude-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2004\/01\/09\/orders-of-magnitude-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Orders of Magnitude, Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a337'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Some businesses take advantages of new OofM&#8217;s, like the first mass-production factories, early users of huge warehouses, early applications of specialization.<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of years later, historians are quick to say &#8220;here was an amazing breakthrough in <b>technology<\/b>,&#8221; but at the time it was often spun as a personal success of one businessman, one product line, one marketing technique &#8212; whoever was quickest on the uptake, with a nod from those few who actually knew what was going on, could pick up the acclaim for the surge forward.  It is sometimes to one&#8217;s advantage not to let others know wherein success truly lies.<\/p>\n<p>However, in each age <i>looking forward<\/i>, there are few people discerning new OofM&#8217;s from &#8216;brilliant new product niches&#8217;, &#8216;revolutionary advertising strategy&#8217;, etc. Laying 10x as much fiber optic cable as your competitors does not an OofM make.  How far up<br \/>\nthe financial <b>food chain<\/b> does this carelessness extend?  <\/p>\n<p>Purification.  Cross-indexing.  Sampling.  Empathizing.  Tracking.<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"-2\">You know what I&#8217;m talking about.  Yes, you.  I see you reading every<br \/>\nnow and then.  No need to hide.  [for the rest of you, consider which of the above are in the future, and which are in the past&#8230;]<\/font><\/p>\n<p>Until next time, keep your nose clean and your eyes open, and trust your senses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some businesses take advantages of new OofM&#8217;s, like the first mass-production factories, early users of huge warehouses, early applications of specialization. Hundreds of years later, historians are quick to say &#8220;here was an amazing breakthrough in technology,&#8221; but at the time it was often spun as a personal success of one businessman, one product line, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indescribable"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}