Individual memory of the 1987 crash and of the possible systemic risks posed by put sales is fading as older traders are replaced by a new generation. However, there is a sense in which that memory has been institutionalized in the U.S. options markets' risk-management systems. One delicious nuance is that part of that institutionalized memory is now Mandelbrot's Levy distributions, which were, as discussed in chapter 4, the "path not taken" by financial economics.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 935