“Is there music in the numbers?” This was an old friend’s question to me as we were trying to make sense of new businesses enabled by digital technology. Circa: 1990s.
In New York now and probably for a few more days, the answer is a resounding yes. There was and is music in the numbers. New York Knicks: 94; San Antonio Spurs: 90. And look once more at the picture. Little guy outmaneuvering big guy.
It’s an oft-told story going back to the Bible’s David. Mythology is filled with it. And then it happens in our time and life flirts with insanity; the vapors of winning the big one.
Sports are definitive—the score board tells stories last chapter. The clowns are not amused. Laughing is their game and distraction their technique.
Elon Musk is good with rockets and then clowns around in politics. The score is final in basketball and rocketry, but beware the clowns.
Recall Stephen Sondheim’s take; he wrote the song, “Send In The Clowns.” In an interview he mused that he meant “send in the fools,” but the word clowns had a better ring.
People dump on Musk because he is said to be worth $1 trillion dollars because he owns a lot of SpaceX. If much of our world is made better in outer space, his cut will be earned.
And literacy—if children’s chances in life get better, it will be because they can read. Pardon me, but I have a hard time getting beyond learning to read. How can humans decode the “deep fakes” of artificial intelligence if they can’t even read?
As we debate politics and government, we need to listen for the “music in the numbers”. Not the rhetoric, but the hard work to get there. Distractions are too easy—watch out for the fools, excuse me, “clowns.” Or demigods.
And never forget, we can take on the big guys. Jalen Brunson, the Knicks small guard took on Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs giant center and won. But when challenge is in the air make sure and watch the scoreboard. In today’s idiom: “Make it make sense.”
