This one time, in Galilee...

[pozorvlak]

In a world where Smile, Chinese Democracy, Duke Nukem Forever and Perl 6 have all actually been released, what archetype are we meant to use for an over-ambitious, never-to-be-completed project? And what did people use before those projects started? What do people who don't know about computers or rock music use

Comments

[johnckirk]

This may not be the best example (since it's based on a misconception), but the most common analogy I've encountered for a never-ending task is "painting the Forth bridge". The theory is that you start at one end, then by the time you've reached the other end the first bit has rusted away, so you need to start all over again.

This post reminds me of the TNG episode Darmok, where the aliens speak entirely in idioms and Picard doesn't have the shared background to recognise them. Some people criticised that episode, saying that this problem should be blindingly obvious in advance, so the aliens shouldn't be surprised if nobody understands them.

However, I think that it's plausible for references to wind up standing alone, devoid of their cultural/historical context. For instance, I understood what the term "Phyrric victory" meant long before I'd actually heard of General Phyrrus. Similarly, people might use the phrase "crossed the Rubicon" without knowing what the Rubicon is. In my case, I found out about both of those meanings by reading comics: "The Incredible Hulk" (Peter David) and "Y The Last Man" (Brian K. Vaughn), respectively.