The Name

A bird that never lands.

The Homa is a bird of Persian myth. It spends its whole life in flight and never touches the ground; in some tellings it has no legs at all. Its shadow falling across someone is said to be a mark of fortune.

What drew me to it is that the Homa is not one thing. It carries both natures in a single body, one wing and one leg of each, and every few hundred years it burns and rises again from its own ashes. It is defined by duality and by rebirth rather than by any fixed form.

That seems right for the technologies this project is concerned with. The same capability that expands what a person can do can narrow what a person is. These are not two technologies to be sorted into good and bad. They are one thing with two natures, and the work is learning to hold both at once.

A meridian is a line drawn around the world to navigate by, a reference for knowing which way you are facing. It is also the sun's highest point, the top of the arc, the moment before it turns.

Something in flight, carrying two natures, trying to keep its bearing.