It may seem strange to some readers to find an article touching on metaphysics in a magazine on guitar making; it will also seem perfectly appropriate to others that such a topic be included.
Another Place
Nature Beauty
The metaphysics of the guitar has to do with “that extra something” that’s intangible and possibly even indefinable. Some guitars have it. Some don’t. It is variously called “the magic,” “the soul,” “the allure,” and so on, even though these terms can be elastic and elusive. None of this is exactly news to anyone who knows the guitar.
Sky and Earth
If we trace a path that starts with Gutenberg’s use of moveable type to Malcom McLean’s invention of the shipping container, we start to recognize a very interesting pattern: Each new layer of abstraction and standardization creates value out of the resulting increases in scale and efficiency.
Today’s digital innovators can trace a similar historical path that starts with mainframe computers and monolithic applications and then, step-by-step, reveals software’s interchangeable parts until we arrive at today’s cloud-based era of microservices and continuous integration.
Microservices is an approach to building software that shifts away from large monolithic applications toward small, loosely coupled and composable autonomous pieces. The benefit of this abstraction is specialization, which drives down costs to develop and drives up agility and quality — while operating much more resilient systems.