Afterword
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

Some of you may wonder if talking about “infinite” possibility is gross overstatement, just so much hyperbole. Well, yes; yes it is—but not by much in any practical sense. To see our point, consider again the LEGO brick, a simple thing of material substance that illustrates that possibility may not be infinite—but it is genuinely immeasurable, and truly limitless.

To Infinity …

Take, for example, the relatively simple case of six 2 × 4 bricks (those with eight studs on top)—and we’ll even ignore color. In 1999 LEGO published the number of possibilities that could be built with just these six bricks: an astounding 102,981,500.¹ This turned out to be a considerable underestimate, however, as it only counted designs where each brick was on top of another in some way—so each of the almost 103 million designs reach precisely six bricks high. But you can also put bricks side by side, yielding five-brick-high combinations as well as four-, three-, and two-brick-high combinations. Søren Eilers and Bergfinnur Durhuus of the University of Copenhagen, plus high school student Mikkel Abrahamsen, who instigated the quest for the right answer, showed that the true number for six 2 × 4 bricks is 915,103,765!²

Now imagine (or pull out of your kids’ treasure trove) twenty-five LEGO bricks, still 2 × 4s, and still all the same color. And then consider this number: 130,881,177,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is not the number of different designs you can make with them. No, that is the number of years they estimate it would take to figure out that precise number!³ In case you were wondering, that is nigh on 131 duodecillion. Years.

The good Danish mathematicians cannot, unfortunately, calculate the number of combinations for any arbitrary number N of 2 × 4 bricks of identical color, but they estimate it to be around 100^N (that’s the number 100 followed by N zeros).⁴ Now think about this: according to LEGO, there are 3,900 distinct types of elements (again, not just bricks but minifigures, wheels, trees, etc.) with fifty-eight different colors, yielding a total of over 7,500 “active combinations” (relatively few elements come in more than one color). Realize, too, that LEGO produces about 21 billion elements a year these days. (Two years worth, each element atop the other, would reach almost to the moon.) And, finally, consider that 485 billion total elements have been produced since it began in 1949 (with about 1,000 more elements manufactured every second).⁵

So how many possible designs could be built with all those LEGO elements? Innumerable. Incalculable. But infinite? No, not infinite, but vastly beyond human comprehension, yes.⁶

And all those elements comprise just one tiny, tiny category of material substances. Just as all the virtual elements you can manipulate in LEGO’s Physical Virtuality offering, Design byME, comprise just one tiny, tiny category of digital substances you could employ in your offerings. And all the material substances in the known universe comprise a tiny, tiny fraction of all the digital substances you could bring to bear in the cosmos incogniti of the Multiverse. And these two variables come together to form only one of the three dimensions of the model, whose arrows on either end extend out, further and further, reaching toward infinity. And with them go the eight realms, expanding ever outward, encompassing ever more possibility, creating deeper and more intense experiences through the innovations resulting from our imaginings.

And of that there truly is no end.

… and Beyond

But that also is not all there is. Beyond the real and the virtual, beyond the universe of Time, Space, and Matter, and the Multiverse incorporating No-Time, No-Space, and No-Matter, lays another realm: the eternal. In eternity there exists the truly Infinite. The word “eternal” does not mean simply everlasting, perpetual, or unceasing. It denotes, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, that which “always has existed and always will exist,” that which is “not subject to time relations.”⁷ In other words, eternity lies outside of time. It moreover lies outside of space (always existing and not subject to distance relations) and outside of matter (always existing and not subject to physical relations). It lies beyond both universe and Multiverse, both Reality and Virtuality, both actuality and possibility, both experience and imaginings. Before any of these were, it is.

In eternity exists the truly Infinite, that which is self-existent. And that existence speaks to the ultimate purpose for everything we do with the possibility that is set before us. To what eternal end are your business, your acts, and your self the means? Your answer may or may not help you create economic value, but it will help you reach beyond, to find the Infinite.