The Butterfly Effect (Poem)

Like a hungry caterpillar
Brimming with potential
But grounded by inertia.

We embrace metamorphosis
Emerging as a butterfly
With wings to take flight
And pollinate new landscapes.

Hopeful that our beating wings
Can create winds of change
That will protect and treasure
All that we hold dear
Today, tomorrow and forever.

By Ciara Muldoon

Co-founder of SearchScene.com, the charitable search engine that protected the living planet, and your privacy, while you searched the web.
(SearchScene closed on 31 December 2021).

Written: 4th January 2022. 

Background:

This poem was inspired by all of the lovely comments we received from kind supporters, after we announced the closure of SearchScene.

Despite becoming the most technically advanced charitable search engine on the planet, SearchScene was not able to take off, as scaling it up was just too expensive at a time when most people are distracted by so many other events. The social inertia proved too much for us to overcome.

The movie, “Don’t Look Up”, reflects some of the same kinds of challenges that we faced, trying to convince people to switch from tech giants that track them all over the web, to a start-up that protected the living planet and their privacy while they searched the web.

We are now hoping to license the tech that we built for SearchScene to other alternative search engines, so we may still be able to make a positive impact, indirectly, in our next project. Update (16 May 2022): Our exciting new project, SearchExpander.com, has finally spread its wings and taken off on an exciting new adventure in the field of alternative / private / charitable search engines!

The butterfly effect is an idea put forward by meteorologist, Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory. In 1972, he presented an academic paper entitled: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” As Lorenz discovered some years earlier, when he made a rounding error in one of his computer simulations, small changes in initial conditions can lead to very different outcomes. This is what makes long-range weather forecasting so challenging. If you are keen to read more about the background to the butterfly effect, check out this article, “When The Butterfly Effect Took Flight”, by Peter Dizikes in MIT Technology Review.

In popluar culture, the butterfly effect has come to be associated with the idea that small changes on an individual or local level can eventually lead to large changes at a systemic or global level.

One of the best things we can do is to look up from our screens and talk to each other. The book, “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age” by Sherry Turkle is a great starting point.