Dominoes As a Metaphor
When you think of domino, it likely brings to mind images of a row of dominoes tipped over by one, and all the others falling in a rhythmic cascade. In fact, the concept of dominoes is a great metaphor for many things. It can describe how a small action creates a larger effect, or how a single domino can start a chain reaction. It can also refer to a person or organization’s leadership style, which has a big impact on the success of the people under them.
Dominoes have been around for centuries and have remained popular as a form of entertainment, education, and social interaction. There are many ways to play with dominoes, including scoring games, such as bergen and muggins. Other types of domino games involve blocking opponents’ play, such as matador and chicken foot.
Each domino has a set of six rectangular tiles, called pips or dots. Each tile has a unique pattern of spots or numbers that distinguishes it from the other tiles in the set. The tiles are arranged edge to edge against each other in lines and angular patterns. They can be played by touching the end of a domino to another domino’s matching end, or a single tile may be placed on top of an already-placed domino to produce a longer line.
In most games, a domino is considered “open” when its two matching ends are not connected to other tiles. The rules of the game determine whether additional tiles can be placed on each side of a double, or only to its long sides. A player must be careful to avoid placing a tile on an open end, because doing so could cause the entire chain to fall over.
Physicist Stephen Morris says that standing up a domino upright gives it potential energy, or stored energy based on its position. When the domino falls, much of this energy is converted to kinetic energy, or the energy of motion. The remaining potential energy is released as heat.
Like a domino, a story can become a disaster or a triumph depending on how the hero acts. The hero must not only act in a way that is logical, but he or she must also make readers want to keep reading. In addition, scenes should be spaced correctly to advance the hero’s progress and not overwhelm readers with too many details or too few.
A similar principle applies to how an IT infrastructure runs. The Domino platform uses a centralized server to manage code and data, which can be deployed on-premises or as a fully-managed cloud service. This central server can enforce access controls for different collaborators, automatically merge changes and detect conflicts, and serve results and diagnostics via the web. This allows teams to scale how they work without sacrificing speed and quality. Using this model, you can use Domino to run projects on demand and accelerate project delivery.
