ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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In the mid 1990s I read a handful of books on complexity/spontaneous-order. I found Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" to be the best. So I expect to value this new book by Kelly. Thank you for notice of it.
I think that the life cycle described is either wrong or enormously over-simplified. Some technologies are both revolutionary and practically perfect right out of the box and some never get beyond the “doesn't work very well stage”.
Starting a fire by the ancient method of rubbing two sticks together can be accomplished very nearly as quickly as doing so with a Zippo lighter—in seconds. It just requires a little skill.
The skill required to use the technology must be considered as distinct. Otherwise, why not compare the skills necessary to produce the tools for rubbing two sticks together (very little) with the skills necessary to produce the tools for making a Zippo lighter (substantial)?
We've been producing computer operating systems for nearly 60 years now. There have been thousands of them from GM-NAA I/O to the phone operating systems of today. IMO none of them work particularly well although today's OSs are enormously more complex than those of a half century ago.
Will they ever get beyond the “doesn't work very well” stage? I don't think so. They're too intimately entwined with the hardware whose use they facilitate and the tasks for which they're being employed both of which change rapidly.
Right now I'm very frustrated because there's a book I studied in grad school in the '80s that explored the idea of a life cycle of inventions -- and I can't remember the title or author for the life of me! At the time, it was very popular with academics in the material-culture area.