Abstract
It was not until the 1920s that botanists solved the mystery of ‘broken’ tulips. The ‘break’ which caused a tulip bulb seemingly to blossom randomly with a second colour striping and feathering the bloom in a unique pattern is actually caused by a virus spread by aphids; but in the seventeenth century all that was known was that the outcome of a planting could not be predicted. The bulb might duplicate the flower whence it descended or it might flourish in unexpected ways — ways that could be given a value — values that could grow exponentially.
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© 2001 Brian Winston
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Winston, B. (2001). ‘Smell the Tulips’: the Internet, Neo-liberalism and Millenarian Hype. In: Lax, S. (eds) Access Denied in the Information Age. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985465_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985465_10
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