Latigo
n.
a dizzying sense of awe at the sheer scale of modern society—looking out at a city so vast and complex it can barely be mapped, with millions of miles of roads and power lines and water mains that must be continually repaired and replaced every few years, feeding a labyrinth of supply chains and regulations and contracts and algorithms—a system so massive that individual people seem almost beside the point, that if everybody were to vanish all at once, the city would sigh and carry on its business.
From labyrinth, a maze of tortuous complexity + vertigo, the whirling sensation of looking down from great heights. Compare Spanish látigo, whip. Pronounced “lat-i-goh.”
