I must admit to being fascinated with the goings on around Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I fly a lot for work so any time there is an “air incident” it gets my attention, but the fact that they still can’t find a 660,000 lb jet that was being tracked on multiple radar systems and was transmitting location signals to multiple receivers on the ground makes it even more interesting for some reason.
I think this article on Slate might have uncovered that reason:
The shock generated by the Boeing 777 mystery is largely a product of how much we’ve come to take for granted the modern superabundance of information. We expect to know where everything is, all the time. If you log on to a flight-tracking website, you can punch in the flight number of any commercial aircraft and see its current location and direction. Seems pretty foolproof.
I think I am surrounded by so much “order” that we forget about what’s pulling in the other direction. The fact that I get a text when by book from amazon is left on my front door step, and that I can get almost any question answered with a few keystrokes and a click makes me forget that the there is an undertow to the universe: entropy. Try as I might to create a box that the world fits neatly into, there will always be things that just don’t fit.
The disappearance (can’t call it a crash until they find a piece) of Flight 370 might be a tragedy. It is (so far) a mystery. I know how to deal with tragedy – mystery still befuddles me.
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