beiser

Well-known member
The point-to-surface method comes from the Soviet notion of an "experimental point"; the principle is that you:
1. Determine a policy goal you would like to reach
2. Designate several "experimental points" where you'll test different tactics.
3. At each of the points, the chosen method will be carried out by local officials according to local conditions.
4. When you have results from your experiments, you lift the successful ones upwards, publicizing their successes as "model experiences," and synthesizing generalized policy guidance for a wider rollout. This is the "to surface"
5. The new guidance is implemented across the country, according to local conditions.

You can think of this, briefly, as "top down to bottom up to top down to bottom up" policymaking. The key feature of it is that it's much less dumb than trying to implement policy everywhere, all at once, without testing it at all first.

Fans of Sci-Hub will want to read Heilmann's piece on the matter: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20066378?seq=1
 

beiser

Well-known member
Corporate jargon is the new theory.
For all the talk about capital, always surprised by how uninterested theory-folks are in actually-existing capex.

Also, the suits quite dislike being compared to a Leninist party-state.
 
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version

Well-known member
Corporate jargon is the new theory.
"Separated from each other by floor-to-ceiling glass partitions on which lower-case letters in the Company's own, distinctive font were stencilled, these compartments ran on one into the next, creating an expansive vista in which sketches, diagrams and other such configurations of precious data, lying face-up on curved tabletops, pinned to walls or drawn on whiteboards or, occasionally, (and this made the data seem all the more valuable, fragile even), on the glass itself, seemed to dialogue with one another in a rich and esoteric language, the scene conveying (deliberately, of course) the impression that this was not only a place of business but, beyond that, a hermetic zone, a zone of alchemy, a crucible in which whole worlds were in the mix."
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
In my limited experience, I'd say there's actually a move away from jargon in the corporate world, at least public-facing.

It's about not sounding like a corporation now. We're not some stiff, stuck-in-the-mud philistines, we're your pals!

I suppose behind the scenes it's all still there. "Surfacing an idea", e.g URGH.
 
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