The New York Times recently included an interesting graphic,“Separated at Birth,” which compares the image of the universe to that of a mouse’s neurons. The graphic strangely suggests that the universe may wrap around itself as we delve more into the infinite or the infinitesimal. 
This notion is captured nicely in this Simpson’s Power of Ten video. The Simpson’s video is actually a parody of the original Power of Tens video produced by two IBM scientists; the scientists also have a www.Powersof10.com website that depicts 10X transitions across both space and time. This video has resulted in numerous copycats: “Secret Worlds: The Universe Within,” and “CellsAlive! How Big.”
In the early nineties, I read a book by Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, called Only the Paranoid Survive, which describes how 10X forces create strategic inflection points, which can topple established companies. Intel faced such a disruptive transition as it moved from being primarily a memory chip company to a CPU company in the last eighties. It left such an impression on me, that it’s the only thing I recall from the book.
Being a quantitative person, I tend to evaluate features in product in terms of quantifiable attributes. Mark Miller, of DevExpress, also uses quantifiable metrics to evaluate the usability of a feature. For example, he measures the amount of mouse distance and keyboard costs required by each new feature. When viewing feature sets quantitatively, I often look at is what the introduction of an order of magnitude change in productivity would mean for the design of a product. I often tell people that the goal of one of my future products is to improve the writing process by a factor of ten.
FYI: The original "Powers of Ten" film was made by Charles & Ray Eames, two married industrial designers. However, I believe the film was funded by IBM after they had designed & built an award-winning tradeshow exhibit for the firm. Their films are now available on a 6-disc DVD collection.
The couple is most known to the public for their furniture designs. Herman Miller still sells a few of the (expensive!) Eames Lounge Chairs each year, but their potato-chip shaped wire chairs are more affordable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eames_Lounge_Chair
Posted by: Example | August 16, 2006 at 06:53 AM
My take from the bodies, that similarities in the photos are coincidence. I am willing to accept that aggregate bodies tend to exhibit similar forces at different scales leading to recurring patterns we observe. (If that's the case, could our universe be an atom for another universe. Just joking here.)
Posted by: Wesner Moise | August 16, 2006 at 05:00 PM
The "Power of Ten" videos also remind me of this flash animation, "Imagining the Tenth Dimension", explaining concepts of string theory.
http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php
Posted by: Wesner Moise | August 16, 2006 at 05:06 PM
Another related "Powers of 10" link compares the relative sizes of celestial bodies.
http://rense.com/general72/size.htm
Posted by: Wesner Moise | August 16, 2006 at 09:51 PM