3 ms·
Technological Progress Happens via Simulated Annealing
- mixmax 17y agoI can't find the source right now, but I remember reading a paper where it was assessed that a new technology needs to be roughly twice as good as what it's replacing if it is to be successful due to the inertia the post describes. The post also makes you realise that marketing and evangelizing is a very important aspect of doing a startup, especially if your product is groundbreaking and threatening to the status qou.
- tehgeekmeister 17y agoit'd be really interesting to see that paper, or even get a bit more information about where you think you saw it/what discipline it was in/etc., so i could find it myself.
- shalmanese 17y agoThe first comment in the post references that paper: http://blog.figuringshitout.com/technological-progress-happens-via-simulated-annealing/#comment-34329589 http://blog.figuringshitout.com/technological-progress-happe...
- DavidSJ 17y agoI'm surprised to see no mention of the iPhone and iPad as departures from the Alto UI paradigms.
- hga 17y agoRead the second comment, which is by the author; it ends with "This post is laying the foundation for what is to become my argument for why the iPad could be the largest mistake that Apple ever made."
- DavidSJ 17y agoWhatever the argument, it will need to somehow apply only to the iPad, and not the iPhone.
- Herring 17y agoIt's sort of a tautology. If innovation happens in a mature section, it creates something different so it's happening in a different field. If no innovation happens, well then it's still the same field. Next year he could be talking about the rapid rate of innovation in dumbed-down tablets.
- lutorm 17y agoHe mentions "multitouch" as one of the staggering UI failures.
- chancho 17y agoExcept for progress in metallurgy and materials science. That's real annealing.
- Groxx 17y agoI think this misses a key phase in technological progress which doesn't match simulated annealing: Once you get to that final minimum, where you can only iterate to improve, people see it as the every-day, and start latching onto a new round of fluid creation (and there's the fight-The-Man attitude, too). I'll call the growth-after-optimum a "flowering" period, where things shoot off in all directions. Frequently, they're based on that optimum, but not always (seeds spread). (and how exactly is the Windows / Command key a major innovation? there have been function keys longer than there have been computer keyboards)