# The past as a compass

Source: https://dinand.com/essays/the-past-as-a-compass/
Author: Dinand Tinholt

> Old maps and new technologies invite us to examine the assumptions behind what we see.

An old map records a way of understanding the world. Its blank spaces, crowded coastlines and choices of scale reveal what its makers could see and what mattered to them. Reading it today involves noticing those choices as much as following its roads.

## The choices inside a model

A business model also begins with choices. Someone decides which events to measure and which relationships to preserve. A forecast turns a complicated environment into a manageable picture. AI extends our ability to draw such pictures, and makes it easier to overlook the decisions that shaped them.

History encourages a useful habit: ask how the picture was made. A beautiful map can place a city incorrectly. A fluent explanation can make an unsupported assumption feel settled. In either case, confidence grows more useful when we can inspect what supports it.

## Room for curiosity

Books, art and philosophy offer other ways to notice what a familiar frame leaves out. A different vocabulary can change the question a team asks about technology. It can also make room for consequences that sit beyond the immediate business case.

When a new tool promises a new world, I want to understand the older ideas traveling with it. That question gives the conversation somewhere useful to begin.

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## A next room to enter.

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