The right tools for the job....

Once upon a time, after the abacus, before computers and electronic calculators, was the slide rule. For the older amongst us, we may remember being introduced to the rituals and mysteries of its use. Although now it may seem ancient and crude, it was a revelation in accuracy and enabled breakthroughs in maths and engineering that changed the world. However, there was another thing that was memorable - the intimacy of it. There was a visceral relationship with crafting a solution with a slide rule that differed from the separation provided by a keyboard and algorithms. There was a certain poetry to it. I always felt connected to the solution.

As our economics and society move further across the scale from complicated to complex and tip over to increasing periods of chaos, I miss that relationship. Instead, I sense people making decisions on information provided by processes they (nor we) fully understand. We were supposed to have learned that lesson during the financial crisis. But, in…