Thoughts on Friday

Not exactly Gandhi's quote about Western civilization, but it'll do.

I was just reading an article in the current Discover magazine about some research being done at Arizona State University into the behavior of crowds. The specific article isn't on their website, though it's cited here at the authors own site. Essentially, the question is crowd control -- how do you move masses of people quickly, making it obvious what they should do, and making it possible for them to do so. Its an interesting question, and one which I'd like to know more about. But, you know, what strucks me as odd was that upon reading the short article, I had two thoughts -- first, are there people who would use this research in reverse, trying to set up a situation where people are least likely to be able to escape, and second, are there people in the gummint who like the idea of simulating how to control the movement of people in a free environment so as to be able to track and orchestrate them.

Hmmm.....