What do you mean by “social context”?
Just read this in “The Art of Doing Science and Engineering” by Richard Hamming (inventor of Hamming codes). It struck me somehow as being relevant to the importance of Elm as a vision of a better way of working, over other aspects of it that might not be going so well:
“It is well known the drunken sailor who staggers to the left or right with n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about √n steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance √n. In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.”
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