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> The media attention on the new campaign, however, drew the eye of a local farmer who remembered the first téléphone Garfield appearing after a storm in the ea

> The media attention on the new campaign, however, drew the eye of a local farmer who remembered the first téléphone Garfield appearing after a storm in the early 1980s, when he was a young man. > He also knew the location of the container - in a secluded sea cave accessible only at low tide. So they've been dealing with this mystery for almost 40 years and this guy knew where the problem was coming from the entire time?

jschwartzi 8y ago
It's been my experience that a lot of seeming mysteries are solved only by the person with the mystery talking to the right person. And the right person could be anyone with an observation. It happens in Engineering all the time too, where you talk to the one user in ten-thousand who happens to have a keen eye for the exact sequence of events on the display, and their careful recitation of the sequence of frames on the display is enough for you to piece together the system state at the time of a failure. It's rare that engineers talk to users, and it's probably equally rare for environmentalists to talk to individual farmers looking for information.
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  It's not even "one in ten thousand", I think more often it's just that the people who don't know assume that no one else knows either and don't bother properly asking around.
  - hanniabu 8y ago
    Or the people that know think the reason is obvious and will probably get fixed soon so don't brother reporting the issue and what they believe is causing it
    - Pxtl 8y ago
      Or every time we ask users we get "just fix it" and "I click the thing and it breaks" style answers.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- macintux 8y ago
  That’s exactly right. There are so, so many events in the world never captured in a durable format that only a few people know, and if you don’t ask them in time, that knowledge is simply gone.
fixermark 8y ago
This is a microcosm of why the information age has been one crazy miracle after another.
- Ericson2314 8y ago
  This is a microcosm yes, but I think a darker one of how the complexity of society has increased without a corresponding increase in coordination to manage it. You can think of there being interaction and coordination graphs with the same nodes. Both are getting bigger (more nodes) and denser (more edges). But the interaction one is getting denser faster. tl:dr 50/100 years ago it would have been harder to talk to the fisherman, but also way less trash in the ocean to ask about.
Hamuko 8y ago
Has the guy been sitting on this information without alerting like any environmental agencies or anyone of the sort?
- spydum 8y ago
  if he saw this as a young man/child, chances are it was cool and interesting, but informing law enforcement/environmental agencies was not top of mind.. its only when you cross paths with some other bit of information, your memory triggers, and now as an adult, you might think to speak up.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  As far as I know, farmers aren't under some duty to report concerning phone mysteries or whatever. Also, a lot of "commoners" aren't exactly deemed credible and may also not know who on earth they should report anything to. Until this became a big campaign with a point of contact and so forth, he probably had no hope of getting any real action, even if he had put it all together mentally and tried to harangue authorities into checking out his theory.

jschwartzi 8y ago

It's been my experience that a lot of seeming mysteries are solved only by the person with the mystery talking to the right person. And the right person could be anyone with an observation. It happens in Engineering all the time too, where you talk to the one user in ten-thousand who happens to have a keen eye for the exact sequence of events on the display, and their careful recitation of the sequence of frames on the display is enough for you to piece together the system state at the time of a failure. It's rare that engineers talk to users, and it's probably equally rare for environmentalists to talk to individual farmers looking for information.

mfoy_ 8y ago
It's not even "one in ten thousand", I think more often it's just that the people who don't know assume that no one else knows either and don't bother properly asking around.
- hanniabu 8y ago
  Or the people that know think the reason is obvious and will probably get fixed soon so don't brother reporting the issue and what they believe is causing it
  - Pxtl 8y ago
    Or every time we ask users we get "just fix it" and "I click the thing and it breaks" style answers.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
macintux 8y ago
That’s exactly right. There are so, so many events in the world never captured in a durable format that only a few people know, and if you don’t ask them in time, that knowledge is simply gone.

fixermark 8y ago

This is a microcosm of why the information age has been one crazy miracle after another.

Ericson2314 8y ago
This is a microcosm yes, but I think a darker one of how the complexity of society has increased without a corresponding increase in coordination to manage it. You can think of there being interaction and coordination graphs with the same nodes. Both are getting bigger (more nodes) and denser (more edges). But the interaction one is getting denser faster. tl:dr 50/100 years ago it would have been harder to talk to the fisherman, but also way less trash in the ocean to ask about.

Hamuko 8y ago

Has the guy been sitting on this information without alerting like any environmental agencies or anyone of the sort?

spydum 8y ago
if he saw this as a young man/child, chances are it was cool and interesting, but informing law enforcement/environmental agencies was not top of mind.. its only when you cross paths with some other bit of information, your memory triggers, and now as an adult, you might think to speak up.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
As far as I know, farmers aren't under some duty to report concerning phone mysteries or whatever. Also, a lot of "commoners" aren't exactly deemed credible and may also not know who on earth they should report anything to. Until this became a big campaign with a point of contact and so forth, he probably had no hope of getting any real action, even if he had put it all together mentally and tried to harangue authorities into checking out his theory.