On my way to get a burrito, at lunch, I noticed a sky written ad being formed. I would have moved on to some other distraction if it weren't for the high tech nature of the writing. I'm used to seeing a bi-plane doing loop to loops, but this was 5 planes flying in a tight parallel formation, spraying precise amounts of smoke to form letters. It reminded me of huge dot-matrix printer.
I began to think about all the innovation that had gone into that dot matrix in the sky. I admired the precision of the planes, and the complex computation needed to turn puffs of smoke into letters legible at 10,000 feet. But I also wondered if that amount of innovative fire power couldn't have been put to better use. Granted the skywriting company made money for it's ingenuity, yet is profit margin the only criteria on which innovation should be judged?
A fellow pedestrian looked up and asked me, "What's that?"
"They're writing something."
"What, oh it's an ad, what a waste. I was hoping it was something good like a proposal."
Then the light changed and I moved on in agreement. A dot matrix in the sky is a technological wonder, but in the end it's a waste of time if it isn't saying something good.
