Posts tagged “letters”

How long to plan for growth/change?

From Arizona Adds Digit to License Plates to Keep Up With Growth

The increase in motor vehicles has exhausted the 10.6 million or so combinations of characters on the state’s six-digit plates, said Cydney DeModica, a spokeswoman for the state’s motor vehicle division.

So Arizona is joining New York, California and other more populous states in adding a seventh digit. The extra digit allows for 106.48 million possible combinations – three letters followed by four numbers – which should accommodate a growing population through 2040.

2040 doesn’t seem that far off when it comes to making sweeping changes to infrastructure. Do they know what they might do after that? Or do popular growth (or motor vehicle ownership) predictions not hold valid beyond 30 years? Seems like a perfect problem for long term thinking, the absence of which created technology challenges such as the Y2K bug.

Of course a key difference here is that the Y2K bug failed to address a definite event (the year 2000 would eventually be reached, at a predictable time in the future), whereas the growth in Arizona cars may follow a trend but it’s far from definite as changes in weather patterns and oil prices could conceivably change the trend dramatically by 2040.

Say What? An example of “untended” design failure

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Missing Letters, Holland, MI

I’m intrigued by stuff in the urban ecosystem that is deployed but untended. Consider this sign at the edge of a shopping plaza on a busy busy street. How long has it been like that? Has anyone who is accountable for the sign noticed? Is someone paying for advertising that they aren’t getting?

Compare with computer displays in airports showing a Windows error, or the piece of gum left on a realtor’s “about this property” display after the owners have moved out. Entropy, man.

(and probably some analogies with semi-smart automated systems that don’t get context 100% of the time)

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