Luck didn't seem important when I was young and everything was simple. In principle, with enough foresight, life was fully controllable. Or so I thought.

No more! I've seen enough examples of good people laid low, and good plans that came crashing down. Now I understand why Fortuna, the goddess of luck, appears so frequently on ancient Roman coins. As usually depicted she holds a cornucopia of wealth in one hand and steers the world's course with her other hand resting on a rudder.

Maybe Fortuna should also be adopted as the goddess of computer science. The term cybernetics comes from the Greek word for steersman. And information technology certainly has become the cornucopia of modern times — immensely valuable, yet hugely vulnerable to random events ...

(see also JustDesserts (20 Sep 1999), UltraMan (8 May 2002), ... )

TopicScience - TopicLife - TopicLanguage - 2003-10-07

(correlates: YearInIdeas2004, MemorySupport, Joan Benoit Samuelson on Pleasing Yourself, ...)