I dreamt that I came up with a method of solving complex social and economic problems. It involved a simple physical procedure that could be appreciated by anyone. I do not remember how it worked, but much of my dream involved explaining it to all sorts of people. Many of them picked it up at once, but some could never get it. I remember being very frustrated about their stupidity and/or lack of interest, which struck me as no less than vicious. The dream kept returning to me during the night. I demonstrated my method at some point by cutting square cakes into square pieces, turning them around, and laying the cakes on top of each other. Again, I am not sure any longer how the method worked, but I kept explaining it to everyone in my dream. Each time I woke up in the middle of the night, I was covered with sweat. When I woke up in the morning, I realized that there was some connection between my method and qualitative input-output analysis, which I introduced years ago.[1] It involves solving a system of simultaneous linear equations by relatively simple means of network analysis. As I wrote in connection with my festschrift some years ago, this was an area of great promise, which I hoped would gather more interest soon.[2] Of course, input-output analysis is far from solving complex social and economic problems, but it was a step in the right direction. The simple physical procedure from my dream is yet to be discovered, though. My mysterious method will surely be returning to me in my dreams.

Footnotes

1. Bon, R., “Qualitative Input-Output Analysis,” in R.E. Miller, K.R. Polenske, and A. Rose, eds., Frontiers of Input-Output Analysis, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 222-231.

2. Bon, R., “In Response to the Festschrift: A Letter to Construction Management and Economics,” Construction Management and Economics, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2007, pp. 241-243. This piece can be found in my Residua under the same title on December 10, 2006.