Friday, September 27, 2013

My Favorite Metaphors: Asteroid Field Navigation

I want to start collecting some of the metaphors and visuals that I keep returning to and thought I'd start with Asteroid Field Navigation. I touched on this briefly once before in the context of making "mistakes" but thought I'd brush it off and represent it.

Asteroid Field Navigation
Back in the days of Lewis and Clark they could spend a few years making a map, hand it over to you, and it would still work because all the mountains and rivers were right where they left them. In our world, the terrain itself is unstable, and it's better still to go the next step and just acknowledge that there is no terrain period. Instead, we travel and navigate in an asteroid field where everything is in motion, including us.  If you try to make a map, you won't succeed because by the time it's done, it's obsolete, and you've probably been hit by an asteroid in the mean time anyway.

But navigation is still possible. They way you do it is by constant course correction in a three step process.

First, orient yourself by quickly getting sufficient clarity about where you are and where you are going. "Where you are" includes getting a bead on the rocks in motion around you, especially those on a collision course.

Second, move. Take some action that avoids catastrophe, utilizes immediate opportunity and moves you in the direction of the destination even if it's not a straight-line course. (Fellow geeks will enjoy visualizing this with vectors.)

Finally, now that you have initiated movement, your whole context has shifted. So go back to step one and start over. Orient, Act, Repeat.

Spells OAR. Cute, huh?  That's just icing on the cake, speaking metaphorically.

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