Читать книгу Seamless - Sorman-Nilsson Anders - Страница 11

One more point before we get started: you may recognise in the cover of the book both the ancient symbol of infinity and the horizontal ‘8'. This symbolises that the hero's journey is, of course, a constant multi-cyclical one. You take this journey with any challenge you meet in business or in your personal life, complete it (hopefully), or get up and dust yourself off and go again. You'll also recognise this iconography of the horizontal 8 (infinity sign) hidden in the bow tie. The word for ‘bow tie' in French is papillon, which is the same as the French word for ‘butterfly' (and in fashionable Italy, farfalla has the same double meaning). In other words, ‘butterfly' – the symbol of metamorphosis and transformation – transfers similar attributes to its distant shape-sharing wearable cousin the bow tie. Shape, models and iconography are central to this book and, as we all know from the great brands of the world, analogues, allegory and hidden meanings are all around us, playing with our subconscious minds.

The horizontal 8 symbol of infinity, in turn, comes from the mathematical infinity symbol (sometimes called the ‘lemniscate') which is credited to John Wallis, who in turn was inspired by a variant of the Roman numeral for 1000 (originally ). In modern mysticism the infinity symbol has become fused with the variation of the ‘ouroboros', an ancient image of a snake eating its own tail, representing life reborn. The infinity symbol can be drawn in one continuous movement, with the loops potentially signifying the balance of opposites – male and female, day and night, dark and light, and who knows? Maybe analogue and digital (see figure I.3). The convergent point may symbolise union and two things becoming one. With all these layers of meaning, the symbol stands for wholeness, integration and completion.

Figure I.3 : the infinite movement between the ordinary, analogue, world and the extraordinary, digital, world

But we can draw out the connections between these symbols even further. The term ‘lemniscate', used in algebraic geometry, comes from the Latin lēmniscātus, which means ‘decorated with ribbons', which in turn may have originated on the ancient Greek island of Lemnos, where ribbons were worn as decorations, much as sartorial men (and, of course, some women) wear bow ties, another form of ribbons.

You see, even the etymological heritage of the infinity symbol and the meanings attached to butterflies and bow ties are mythically intertwined, seamlessly and infinitely. Who knows? Maybe there is only one story, a monomyth behind this. And the seamless symbol of the hero's journey is aptly the infinity sign, endless, enduring and transformative as it, as well as the butterfly and the bow tie. And within this, the convergent point – the point where the infinity symbol crosses itself, where the ‘wings' of the butterfly and the bow tie come together (see figure I.4, overleaf) – becomes the seamless interplay between ordinary and extraordinary worlds, and in our case the dynamics between the analogue and the digital in the context of digital adaptation and human transformation.