Page 14 - Like No Business I Know

Boilerplate and the Second Law
(Fantastic Transactions 1, 1990)

Nelson Lazaretto was no easier to get hold of than his venture
capital. Persistence, the blunted sensibility of a salmon dashing itself
against rocks to reach an upstream spawning ground, was required.
Obtaining an audience also demonstrated the petitioner’s sincerity of
ambition, a quality rated highly by the maverick entrepreneur. The
action of which his piece would be considerable had to be quite
active, indeed.
He glanced at the appointment book open before him on his desk.
“No more than five minutes, Mr. Attorcoppe. Whatever your
proposal is, give me its essentials. Now.”
“Yes, sir!”
Attorcoppe was pale, endomorphic, myopic, a contrast to
Lazaretto’s lean spa-conditioned physiognomy. He sat opposite the
financier in a straight-backed chair, a slim attaché case appearing to
float on his pudgy thighs. Attorcoppe drew forth some papers, but
referred infrequently to them as he raced through his recitation.
“Communications. Computers. Software linking it all up. Phone
company and the chip-makers have the hardware cornered. Charging
plenty, right? Messages going out through modems and satellite
relays: faxes, spreadsheets, electronic mail. I’ve charted the growth
curve here: cost is keeping hard-copy alive, but rates—see this other
curve—will cross at some point, maybe another three to five years.
Then paper will be losing out, big. You with me? Okay.”
He drew a deep breath.
“What does it mean, driven by cost? Efficiency, least expenditure
of resources for given result. Years ago found human activity to be
following second law of thermodynamics, entropy, in organizational
principles. So nobody has to drive it, organization has its own
dynamic, a law of nature. What’s that mean for future of
communications? I’ll tell you; I figured it out. Worth millions:
machine language.”
Attorcoppe paused, looked at his watch. “That’s what I call it, for
now. Not the absolute internal computer set of instructions by the

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