Figure 3

Example of a technological structure organized as a bow tie. Aerial view of the Bologna freight marshalling yard, clearly showing a structure analogous to a bow tie. Wagons arrive from a variety of sources (left bow); to facilitate control and sorting out operations, they are driven through a narrowing: few rails under strict supervision to ensure the maximal capability for control and decision-making; from here they are dispatched to a plethora of new destinations (right bow). Again, the narrowing (the 'core' surveillance station) allows economical and effective regulation to be taken and exercised on a variety of inputs (train provenances) and to yield a quantity of outputs (new destinations). Inspired by Needham [122], p. 170, Figure forty five. Image from Google Maps.