Something I was thinking about last night: We're in a time when the rate of
inventions is limited by the size of the pool of capable people and how much
time they have, rather than individual's innate inventiveness. What gets
invented next depends of the evolutionary fitness of current inventions and
so we evolve instead of leaping with paradigm shifts.
Is this the way evolution (of species, of ideas) works; an
edge-of-bell-curve step (punctuated equilibrium) followed by competition to
evolve to a stable system? Or are the two mechanisms of change of comparable
magnitude and we happen to be in one rather than the other?
[or: Is it that great leaps are by necessity rarer? Or: Is it that the car
industry (say) which is characterised by a lack of paradigm shifts does
indeed have a high rate of invention, just like what's being done on the
WWW, but that I can see one and not the other?]
So I have some questions: If we just can't take those obvious next steps
fast enough to run out, if we can always see where to go next, is there
anything to be proud of? And is what's being achieved now technologically on
top of the WWW foundation important if there is indeed going to be a
paradigm shift again one day, and is what is really important the types of
communities and interactions which occur in this sphere which will remain
the same as long as there is interconnectedness and as long as there is
humanity?
Something I was thinking about last night: We're in a time when the rate of inventions is limited by the size of the pool of capable people and how much time they have, rather than individual's innate inventiveness. What gets invented next depends of the evolutionary fitness of current inventions and so we evolve instead of leaping with paradigm shifts.
Is this the way evolution (of species, of ideas) works; an edge-of-bell-curve step (punctuated equilibrium) followed by competition to evolve to a stable system? Or are the two mechanisms of change of comparable magnitude and we happen to be in one rather than the other?
[or: Is it that great leaps are by necessity rarer? Or: Is it that the car industry (say) which is characterised by a lack of paradigm shifts does indeed have a high rate of invention, just like what's being done on the WWW, but that I can see one and not the other?]
So I have some questions: If we just can't take those obvious next steps fast enough to run out, if we can always see where to go next, is there anything to be proud of? And is what's being achieved now technologically on top of the WWW foundation important if there is indeed going to be a paradigm shift again one day, and is what is really important the types of communities and interactions which occur in this sphere which will remain the same as long as there is interconnectedness and as long as there is humanity?